At a time when nearly all political actors and observers—despite the nature of their normative commitments—morally appeal to the language of democracy, the particular signification of the term has become obscured.
Hobbes and the Democratic Imaginary argues that critical engagement with various elements of the work of Hobbes, a notorious critic of democracy, can deepen our understanding of the problems, stakes, and ethics of democratic life. Firstly, Hobbes’s descriptive anatomy of democratic sovereignty reveals what is essential to the institution of this form of government, in the face of the conceptual confusion that characterizes the contemporary deployment of democratic terminology. Secondly, Hobbes’s critique of the mechanics of democracy points toward certain fundamental political risks that are internal to its mode of operation. And thirdly, contrary to Hobbes’s own intentions, Christopher Holman shows how the selective redeployment of certain Hobbesian categories could help construct a normative ground in which democracy is the ethical choice in relation to other sovereign forms.
Tabla de materias
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Democratic Non-Sense
Hobbes as Democratic Anatomist
Summary of Contents
Part I: Democratic Critique
1. Hobbes on the Madness of Democracy
The Multitude and the People in
The Elements of Law and
De Cive
Democracy and Its Administration
Democracy and the Hubris of the Many
Eloquence and the Democratic Inflammation of the Passions
Madness and Multitude in the Democratic Assembly
2. Civil Science against Democratic Normativity
Freedom and Democratic Participation in
The Elements of Law
The Disarticulation of Freedom and Participation in
De Cive
Authorization and Representation in
Leviathan
The Disappearance of Democracy
Part II: Democratic Conditions
3. Human Institution and Alterity
Ontological Materialism and the Limits of Natural Knowledge
Hobbesian Contingency
The Philosophical Anthropology of Sensation
Difference and the Passions
Creativity and Social-Historical Alterity
4. Hobbesian Equality-in-Difference
Equality as Natural Law
Natural Reason and the Equality of Intelligences
The Plurality of Reasons
Curiosity, Happiness, and the Limits of Practical Wisdom
The Practice of Equality
Part III: Democratic Ethics
5. Democracy and Natural Law
Hobbes’s Critique and Reconstruction of the Idea of Natural Law
Politics and Antipolitics
Liberty and Natural Power
Natural Law and the True Liberty of the Subject
The Reappearance of Participatory Desire in
Leviathan
Toward a Hobbesian Democracy
Summation
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Sobre el autor
Christopher Holman is Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
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