Hobbes
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the turbulent heart of seventeenth-century political thought stands Thomas Hobbes — a man whose radical vision of human nature and sovereign power continues to unsettle and provoke centuries after his death. Richard Peters' authoritative study chronicles the life, intellectual development, and enduring philosophical legacy of this towering English thinker, from the anxieties of civil war that shaped his worldview to the masterwork Leviathan, in which Hobbes argues that only absolute sovereign authority can rescue mankind from its brutish natural state. Peters presents a rigorous yet accessible account of Hobbes's mechanistic psychology, his groundbreaking social contract theory, and his deeply controversial materialist philosophy of mind, placing each within the precise historical and intellectual context that gave it meaning. Peters writes with the precision of a trained analytical philosopher and the narrative clarity of a skilled historian, making this one of the most respected introductions to Hobbesian thought in the twentieth century. The study illuminates the profound tensions within Hobbes's system — between liberty and authority, fear and reason, science and politics — revealing a thinker far more nuanced and contradictory than his reputation as the prophet of despotism suggests. For anyone who has ever wondered how a single philosopher could simultaneously lay the foundations of modern political science and scandalise an entire era, Peters' Hobbes offers a compelling and deeply rewarding answer.
Author: Richard Peters
Format: Paperback
Genre: Philosophy
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the turbulent heart of seventeenth-century political thought stands Thomas Hobbes — a man whose radical vision of human nature and sovereign power continues to unsettle and provoke centuries after his death. Richard Peters' authoritative study chronicles the life, intellectual development, and enduring philosophical legacy of this towering English thinker, from the anxieties of civil war that shaped his worldview to the masterwork Leviathan, in which Hobbes argues that only absolute sovereign authority can rescue mankind from its brutish natural state. Peters presents a rigorous yet accessible account of Hobbes's mechanistic psychology, his groundbreaking social contract theory, and his deeply controversial materialist philosophy of mind, placing each within the precise historical and intellectual context that gave it meaning. Peters writes with the precision of a trained analytical philosopher and the narrative clarity of a skilled historian, making this one of the most respected introductions to Hobbesian thought in the twentieth century. The study illuminates the profound tensions within Hobbes's system — between liberty and authority, fear and reason, science and politics — revealing a thinker far more nuanced and contradictory than his reputation as the prophet of despotism suggests. For anyone who has ever wondered how a single philosopher could simultaneously lay the foundations of modern political science and scandalise an entire era, Peters' Hobbes offers a compelling and deeply rewarding answer.