Hobbes: Leviathan (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

Hobbes: Leviathan (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by Hobbes, Thomas. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780521396417.

S. A. Lloyd proposes a radically distinct interpretation of Hobbess Leviathan that shows transcendent interests - interests that override the fear of death - to be crucial to both Hobbess analysis of social disorder and his proposed remedy to it. Most previous commentators in the analytic philosophical tradition have argued that Hobbes thought that credible threats of physical force could be sufficient to deter people from political insurrection. Professor Lloyd convincingly shows that because Hobbes took the transcendence of religious and moral interests seriously, he never believed that mere physical force could ensure social order. Lloyds interpretation demonstrates the ineliminability of that half of Leviathan devoted to religion, and attributes to Hobbes a much more plausible conception of human nature than the narrow psychological egoism traditionally attributed to Hobbes.