Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-k7p5g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T14:54:08.657Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Religion of Thomas Hobbes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Peter Geach
Peter Geach
Affiliation:
Professor of Logic, The University of Leeds
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In G. K. Chesterton's story The Doom of the Darnaways, Lord Darnaway put on the spines of dummy books in his library such empty designations as The Snakes of Ireland and The Religion of Frederick the Great: I too might appear to have chosen a non-subject for this paper. My coming to the contrary conclusion was the unwitting work of the man whom Balliol College employed to give us tutorials in political philosophy. I soon noticed that his interpretation of Hobbes seemed to be based on a few chapters of Leviathan; desiring to get material for probing questions, and allured by Hobbes's style, I quickly devoured the whole of Leviathan. This reading left me with an abiding respect for the moral and political philosophy of Hobbes; his religious views, at this time, I found curious rather than impressive, but already I had no doubt that they were not mere hollow professions thinly cloaking an immoralist atheism, but were considered opinions sincerely held.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1981 , pp. 549 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Czechowic, Marcin. Rozmowy chrystyjańskie, 1575. Republished by the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa-Lódź, 1979.Google Scholar
Hobbes, , Leviathan. Reprinted from 1651 edition with an essay by Pogson Smith, W. G.. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1909.Google Scholar
Hobbes, , Leviathan. Introduction by Lindsay, A. D.. London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, (Everyman's Library), 1914.Google Scholar
Priestley, Joseph. Notes on all the Books of Holy Scripture for the Use of the Pulpit and Private Families. 4 vols. Northumberland, 1805.Google Scholar
The Racovian Catechism. Translated by Rees, Thomas, London, F. S. A., 1818.Google Scholar
Roberts, Robert. Christendom Astray from the Bible. London: Frank Jannaway, 1945.Google Scholar
Warrender, Howard. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: his Theory of Obligation. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Eliot, T. S. ‘John Bramhall’. In Selected Essays. London, Faber and Faber Ltd, 1932.Google Scholar
Taylor, A. E. ‘The Ethical Doctrine of Hobbes’. Philosophy, vol. 13, no. 52, 1938.Google Scholar