The Hobbes Industry
| Date | 01 March 1991 |
| Published date | 01 March 1991 |
| Author | M. M. Goldsmith |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1991.tb00585.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political Studies (1991),
XXXIX,
135-147
The Hobbes
Industry
M. M.
GOLDSMITH
Victoria University
of
Wellington
The tercentenary of Hobbes’s death in 1971 was commemorated by a number of
conferences, inevitably resulting in journal articles and volumes of collected
papers. A newsletter devoted to Hobbes also emerged.’ 1988 marked the four-
hundredth anniversary of Hobbes’s birth, occasioning celebrations even more
extensive. The round of conferences began imaginatively with one held in
September 1987 in Leeds to celebrate Hobbes’s conception, continued with
Milan, Naples, Capri, Urbino, Paris, Lyon, Heydelvedthof, Hofgeismar, Oxford
and Perth, Australia, and (probably) concluded at the American Political Science
Association meeting in September 1989 in Atlanta, Georgia. (This list is surely
not complete.)
There were rightly several conferences in Europe, since Hobbes was, as he
himself boasted, as much a European figure as an English one.’ His interests in
America are proclaimed on the title page of the 1642
De
Cive
as well as in the text
and in
Leviathan.’
Perth produced sessions sufficiently stimulating to require no
justification. The two-year sequence further testifies to the widespread interest in
Hobbes; even Morris Zapp could not have attended all the
conference^.^
In fact
the considerable number of different scholars involved portends further mono-
graphs, journal articles and volumes of papers
-
for many of the works reviewed
or
mentioned in this essay were published
or
conceived before 1988. It is clear that
Hobbes has become established as a ‘world class’ thinker.
The town of Malmesbury, which for a long time was embarrassed by the
unsavoury reputation for atheism of its most famous son, has lately become more
willing to acknowledge him; there is now a plaque marking his approximate
’
Now called
International Hobbes Association Newsletter;
correspondence and ‘dues’ of
$8
per
year should
be
sent to Professor Timothy
Fuller,
Department of Political Science, Colorado College,
Colorado Springs, CO
80903,
USA.
’
Vita Thomae Hobbesii Malmesburiensis
(London,
1679),
pp.
&7;
The Life
of
Thomas Hobbes
of
Malmesbury
(London,
1680),
p.
8
(both reprinted in one volume, Exeter,
The Rota,
1979).
See
also
Quentin Skinner, ‘Thomas Hobbes and his disciples in France and England’,
Comparative Studies
in
Society and History,
8
(1
969), 15347.
’
H. Warrender (ed.),
The Clarendon Edition
of
the Philosophical Works
of
Thomas Hobbes, Vol.
II:
De Cive: The Latin Version
(Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1983),
plate
I
and Ch. i,
s.
13
(cited as
De
Cive
with chapter and section);
Leviathan
Ch.
13,
p.
63
[page numbers refer to the first edition,
1651,
which are noted in the editions of C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, Penguin,
1968)
and
W.
G.
Pogson-Smith (Oxford, Clarendon
Press,
1909)].
Hobbes sat on the board of the Virginia Company;
see
Noel Malcolm, ‘Hobbes, Sandys and the Virginia Company’,
Historical Journal,
24 (1981),
‘
But the endurance prize may well be held by FranGois Tricaud who has confessed to attending
297-32
1.
nine Hobbes conferences during this period: see
Archives de Philosophie,
53
(1990).
Cahier
2,
p.
2.
0032-32 17/91/01/0135-17/$03.00
0
1991
Political
Studies
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