Free Shipping Over $89* | 10% off gift cards to celebrate Mother's Day (*T&Cs apply)
Track My Order
Help Centre
Likes
My Wish ListsLogin / Join
Booktopia
Australia's local bookstore
Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Subverting the Leviathan : Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat - James Martel

Subverting the Leviathan

Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat

By: James Martel

eBook | 12 October 2007

At a Glance

eBook

RRP $115.74

$104.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $26.25 with

 or 

Instant Digital Delivery to your Kobo Reader App

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader.

Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and rhetorical representation. In Leviathan, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness."

To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making the leap to politics, Martel suggests that following Hobbes's argument, the sovereign can also be seen as idolatrous-a separated essence-a figure who supplants the people it purportedly represents, and that learning to be better readers enables us to challenge, if not defeat, the authority of the sovereign.

Industry Reviews
Compelling... [An] excellent book... Highly recommended.
on

You Can Find This eBook In

Non-FictionReligion & BeliefsReligionPhilosophy of ReligionPhilosophySocial & Political PhilosophyReligious Issues & DebatesPolitics & GovernmentPolitical Science & TheoryLiterature, Poetry & PlaysHistory & Criticism of Literature

More in Social & Political Philosophy

The Icarus Syndrome : A History of American Hubris - Peter Beinart

eBOOK

The Icarus Syndrome

A History of American Hubris

eBook

RRP $28.99

$23.20

20%
OFF
Just Another Soldier : A Year on the Ground in Iraq - Jason Christopher Hartley

eBOOK

Just Another Soldier

A Year on the Ground in Iraq

eBook

RRP $25.99

$20.99

19%
OFF

This product is categorised by