Abstract

The sustained and critical attention that Hobbes commands from twentieth century scholars proves the relevance of his philosophy to our concerns, but it cannot explain the occasion for such an attention. The chief aim of the present work is to provide an account of the reason for the sudden emergence of diverse interpretations of Hobbes that had cropped up in the twentieth century. This work argues that the arrival of the diverse interpretations cannot be answered only by looking at the developments within Hobbes’s political philosophy. We have to go outside Hobbes’s political philosophy to account for their arrival. The tenability of Hobbesian philosophy which is founded on Newtonian and Galilean theories that were subsequently contended by Einstein's Theory of Relativity is discussed in the light of the interpretations of four scholars – Leo Strauss, A E Taylor, J H Warrender, C B Macpherson – that attempted to provide alternative foundations such as Self-observation, Moral Imperative, Moral Obligation, Possessive Individualism, respectively. This book will be of considerable interest not only to the scholars of Hobbes, but also to those interested in the relationship between philosophy and science.