The Elements of Representation in Hobbes

Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-90-04-18174-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 2, 286 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Studies in the History of Political Thought

Commentators have traditionally constructed Hobbes's thinking on representation too narrowly, as a self-contained area of his political theory. This book challenges this orthodoxy of Hobbes scholarship, which owes less to Hobbes’s thought than to contemporary preconceptions of what counts as political thinking. In her powerful and original analysis, Mónica Brito Vieira mines neglected strands of Hobbes's theory of representation, and reinstates it in a much wider pattern of Hobbes’s theorizing about human thought and action in relation to widely varied images, roles and fictions. The result is a compelling portrait of how man's natural power to form representations through the imagination and artifice underpins his capacity to break away from nature, and fashion a world that best suits his needs.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brito Vieira, Mónica

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introductory Note
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations and Editions

Introduction

1. Aesthetic Representation
Introduction
Resemblance vs. Representation
Representations or Perceptual Images
Images of God
The Sovereign as Image
Images of Saints
The Eucharist: Presence or Representation?
Metaphors as Representations
The Representation of Objects in Perspective
Conclusion

2. Dramatic Representation
Introduction: Hobbes and the Theatre
The Man and the Person
The World as Stage
Dis/simulating with Others
Actors and Hypocrites
Religious Play-Acting and the Power of Crowds
‘Quixotic’ Personalities and Republican Men
Theatre of Politics
The Powers of Theatre
The Politics of Theatre
Conclusion

3. Juridical Representation
Introduction
The Elemental View
Representation by Fiction
The State as Person
Representing the Covenant into Being
The Representativeness of the Sovereign
Parliament as Representation
The Dangers of Subordinate Representation
The State’s Many Guises
Conclusion

4. Representation in Theology
Introduction
Three Persons as Three Representatives
Three Persons as Three Roles
Revisions in Response to Critics
The Trinity as Political Analogy

Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mónica Brito Vieira, Ph.D. (2005) in History of Political Thought, University of Cambridge, is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and a Visiting Scholar at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. She specializes in the history of political thought and contemporary political theory, and is the co-author (with David Runciman) of Representation (Polity, 2008).