The elements of Law Natural and Politic - Softcover

Hobbes, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1545148473 ISBN 13: 9781545148471

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher who is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for most later Western political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy. Though on rational grounds a champion of absolutism for the sovereign, Hobbes also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.

About this title

About the Author:

J. C. A. Gaskin is a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. He lives in Dublin and near Morpeth, Northumberland.

Language Notes:

Text: English, Latin

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1545148473
• ISBN 13: 9781545148471
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 110
• Editor: Gouveia Andrea