Thomas Hobbes: a Philosopher of War or Peace?

Delphine Thivet (1)

1 EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Along with Machiavelli, Hobbes is usually regarded as the pre-eminent representative of the ‘power-politics’ school of classical realism. He is frequently quoted for his pessimistic depiction of the state of nature that he so famously described as a brutal and anarchic arena in which each individual seeks his own advantage to the detriment of all other individuals, in a perpetual struggle for power. As reflective of this, political realism is sometimes even named the ‘Hobbesian tradition’. Yet there is reason to question whether the standard characterization of realism as a form of moral scepticism which ‘resists the application of morality to war’ provides an accurate description of Hobbes’s political philosophy. In this essay I examine Hobbes’s conception of war, in order to show how, in some fundamental respects, it deviates from this ‘realism’.

Mots clés: Thomas Hobbes; Theory of War; Just War; Realism; 17th Century & Early Modern Philosophy; English Civil War; Peace

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société; Philosophie; Science politique; Histoire

Delphine Thivet. Thomas Hobbes: a Philosopher of War or Peace?. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2008, 16 (4), p. 701-721. ⟨hal-01078995⟩