14 Victorian Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes

Abstract This chapter explores the Victorian interpretations of Thomas Hobbes and the pursuit of Victorian Hobbesian revival. Studies have varied in detail, but have concurred in claiming that arguments derived from Hobbes were systematically deployed by Victorian theorists, in order to resist the rise of democracy and to foster new forms of state power on a scale undreamt of by ‘absolutist’ rulers of Hobbes's own era. By the 1890s Hobbes was widely referred to, even by those who disliked his ideas, as England's ‘greatest’ political philosopher. His most important work, Leviathan, was portrayed as ‘one of the English bibles’, ‘the first great fountain of original ideas’, and ‘nothing less than the cornerstone of the science of politics’.Yet it had not always been thus. After his death in 1679 detailed knowledge of Hobbes's life and thought had largely disappeared from the mainstream of intellectual debate in Britain for well over a century.