This book is about virtue and statecraft in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan. Its overarching argument is that the fundamental foundation of Hobbes’s political philosophy in Leviathan is wise, generous, loving, sincere, just, and valiant—in sum, magnanimous—statecraft, whereby sovereigns aim to realize natural justice, manifest as eminent and other-regarding virtue. I argue that concerns over the virtues of the natural person bearing the office of the sovereign suffuse Hobbes’s political philosophy, defining both his theory of new foundations and his critiques of law and obligation. These aspects of Hobbes’s thought are new to Leviathan, as they respond to limitations in his early works in political theory, Elements and Cive—limitations made apparent by the civil wars and the regicide of Charles I. Though new, I argue that they tap into ancient political and philosophical ideas, foremostly the variously celebrated, mystified, and maligned figure of the orator founder.

Matthew Hoye is Associate Professor of Global Justice at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. A political theorist by training, Hoye has a background in the history of ideas and philosophy. He obtained his PhD from the New School for Social Research in 2013 and was a visiting fellow at the Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies in Toronto and at Queen Mary, University of London. More recently, he has worked at Maastricht University and Vrije University, Amsterdam.

New Foundations, Statecraft, and Virtue in Hobbes’s Leviathan: Sovereignty as a Vocation
One: Introduction
Two: Leviathan against the Borough Corporation
Three: Rhetorical Action and Constitutive Politics
Four: Rhetorical Action in Leviathan
Five: New Foundation in Leviathan
Six: Law and Natural Justice
Seven: Obligation, Resistance, and Sovereign Virtue
Bibliography
Index