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With this third and concluding volume, I turn from Renaissance theories of self-government to their leading philosophical opponent, Thomas Hobbes. As we shall see, Hobbes was nurtured in the humanist ideals with which I was chiefly concerned in volume 2. But he went on to repudiate his upbringing and, in developing his theories of freedom, obligation and the state, he sought to discredit and supersede some of the most fundamental tenets of humanist political thought. Reacting above all against the Renaissance predilection for self-governing city-republics, he constructed a theory of absolute sovereignty grounded on a covenant specifically requiring that each one of us 'give up my Right of Governing my selfe'. The aim of this Introduction will be to trace the process by which Hobbes arrived at these anti-humanist commitments, to examine the resulting elements in his civil science and to consider their place in his more general scheme of the sciences.
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With this third and concluding volume, I turn from Renaissance theories of self-government to their leading philosophical opponent, Thomas Hobbes. As we shall see, Hobbes was nurtured in the humanist ideals with which I was chiefly concerned in volume 2. But he went on to repudiate his upbringing and, in developing his theories of freedom, obligation and the state, he sought to discredit and supersede some of the most fundamental tenets of humanist political thought. Reacting above all against the Renaissance predilection for self-governing city-republics, he constructed a theory of absolute sovereignty grounded on a covenant specifically requiring that each one of us 'give up my Right of Governing my selfe'. The aim of this Introduction will be to trace the process by which Hobbes arrived at these anti-humanist commitments, to examine the resulting elements in his civil science and to consider their place in his more general scheme of the sciences.
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