Visions of Politics: Volume 3, Hobbes and Civil Science

The third of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world’s leading intellectual historians. This collection includes some of his most important essays on Thomas Hobbes, each of which has been carefully revised for publication in this form. In a series of writings spanning the past four decades Professor Skinner examines, with his customary perspicuity, the evolution and character of Hobbes’s political thought. An indispensable work in its own right, this volume also serves as a demonstration of those methodological theories propounded in Volume I, and as an appositional commentary on the Renaissance values of civic virtue treated in Volume II. All of Professor Skinner’s work is characterised by philosophical power, limpid clarity, and elegance of exposition; these essays, many of which are now recognised classics, provide a fascinating and convenient digest of the development of his thought. Professer Skinner has been awarded the Balzan Prize Life Time Achievement Award for Political Thought, History and Theory. Full details of this award can be found at http://www.balzan.it/News_eng.aspx?ID=2474

• The major statements of one of the world’s leading intellectual historians, on the greatest English political philosopher • Each essay revised and reset, with apparatus presented in consistent form • Numerous classic pieces, collected together for the first time

1. Introduction: Hobbes’s career in philosophy; 2. Hobbes and the studia humanitatis; 3. Hobbes’s changing conception of a civil science; 4. Hobbes on rhetoric and the construction of morality; 5. Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state; 6. Hobbes on the proper signification of liberty; 7. Hobbes and the classical theory of laughter; 8. History and ideology in the English revolution; 9. The context of Hobbes’s theory of political obligation; 10. Conquest and consent: Hobbes and the engagement controversy; 11. Hobbes and his disciples in France and England; 12. Hobbes and the politics of the early Royal Society; 13. Hobbes’s last word on politics.

David Easton Award - Foundation of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association 2007

‘As a retrospective showcase of the work of a major scholar, this is impressive. Skinner’s ability to combine political and philosophical insight with minute knowledge of several centuries of political literature is awe inspiring.’ Robert Sugden, Times Higher Education Supplement

\' … this is a deeply impressive collection which displays Skinner\'s exceptional range.\' The New York Review