Victor Nuovo: Creating Civil Society

Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy is a paradoxical fabric. On the one hand, his view of mankind is uncomplimentary, bordering on the defamatory; and yet he also imagines our species endowed with extraordinary power and worth, capable of imitating God by creating a life form, the civil state, and doing so with high moral purpose. In this regard, he has been compared to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who stands at the apex of modern European moral philosophy. I propose, in this essay, to treat Hobbes as a moral … (read more)

In the introduction to his magisterial work, “Leviathan,” Thomas Hobbes invites his readers to imagine the civil state as an animal, an artificial life created by human art in imitation of the divine. To justify this analogy, he likens the powers and func … (read more)

Calvin and Hobbes are well known names, although mostly because of the celebrated comic strip figures who bear them, and not because of the historical personages whose names they bear. In history, Calvin and Hobbes are two of the most dour and forbidding … (read more)