(Qualified) Admiration for Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes died on this date 335 years ago in 1679 (aged 91--a remarkably long life for someone in the seventeenth century!), allegedly uttering "Now I take a great leap in the dark." I have read Leviathan in a first-year elective on justice for several years now, and I am continually amazed by the sheer brilliance of the book and regard it as among the great works of our civilization. Every student of the law should, I think, grapple with Hobbes's insights into human nature, political power, and the origins of law, even if one must (as I do) disagree in the end. The great Catholic philosopher Peter Geach was also an admirer of Hobbes, and here is a bit from his splendid paper "The Religion of Thomas Hobbes" (contrary to the conventional view that Hobbes was a closet atheist, Geach argues that Hobbes was a heterodox Christian):

The writings of Hobbes manifest a quality that he shares with certain other writers: with Thucydides, with the Old Testament historiographers, with Schopenhauer in some works. All these writers have the power to present drily, without rhetorical condemnation, what men can be like and under stress often are like: that is, pretty nasty. Men go in for self-flattering illusions and dislike authors who hold up a mirror to the ugly human face. As the epitaph says, few have loved Thucydides son of Oloros (of course he did win the love and admiration of Hobbes); abuse of Schopenhauer, as of Hobbes, is a commonplace; Msgr Knox found Old Testament histories hard to take. Splutters of disgust and indignation against these authors who have dared to tell the truth are often grimly comic in their effect; reality has a way of vindicating the truth-tellers against the flatterers. As the song says, if you break the bloody glass (sc. barometer) you won't stop the weather.