Hobbes and Modern Political Thought

'Hobbes and Modern Political Thought brings the work of Yves Charles Zarka - one of the most important interpreters of Hobbes - to Anglophone readers, perhaps for the first time. Zarka's long-standing engagement with Hobbes shows how to read Hobbes's philosophical works. This text, admirably translated, will enrich the English discussion of Hobbes's philosophy.' Richard A. Lee, Jr, Professor of Philosophy, DePaul University Zarka's compelling examination of Thomas Hobbes as a contemporary political thinker Yves Charles Zarka investigates how Hobbes established the framework for modern political thought by elaborating a complete political anthropology: recasting the idea of inalienable individual rights, constructing an abstract idea of the state, and inventing political representation. In his examination, Zarka also shows how Hobbes remains a contemporary thinker here at the end of modernity. Thus, the Hobbesian theory of negative liberty is the origin of liberalism, where interest and contract are found in contemporary discussions of the comportment of economic actors, and state sovereignty returns anew in the form of the servility of the state. Translated and with a contextualising introduction by James Griffith, this book is no mere accounting of Hobbes as a central historical figure but an argument against a calcified understanding of what makes Hobbes our contemporary. Yves Charles Zarka is Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris Descartes University, and Global Professor at Beijing University. He also teaches in New York, Rome, Barcelona and Porto Alegre and edits the political philosophy review Cités. James Griffith is Assistant Professor of the History of Political Thought at the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Bratislava, Slovakia. Cover image: Wassily Kandinsky, Fragil (Fragile), 1931 (c) akg-images Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN 978-1-4744-0121-0 Barcode