Thomas Hobbes and ‘gently instilled’ conscience

Gais, Amy

doi:10.1080/01916599.2021.1894591

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Ryan identified it in M. M. Goldsmith's Hobbes's Science of Politics [1966: 214-27] and endorsed it himself (Ryan [1983(Ryan [ , 1988). More recently, Geoffrey Vaughan [2002], Teresa Bejan [2010Bejan [ , 2018, and Amy Gais [2021] have adhered to it. According to this approach, which this paper also advocates, Hobbes was neither an authoritarian nor a liberal writer, allowing some inward freedom but also believing the sovereign should instill her subjects with civil doctrine.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Governing of Opinions

Oliveira

2022

Disputatio

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Thomas Hobbes’s most important recommendations for a sovereign reader concerned the governing of opinion. Due to the spread of false doctrines and their powerful champions, Hobbes was afraid that subjects would have opinions contrary to the maintenance of peace. His solution comprehended a combination of civic education and censorship. This text explains how Hobbes justifies his recommendations from the perspective of individual deliberation. It argues that Hobbes conceived censoring circulating doctrines as a way of keeping subjects’ minds like clean paper, ready for the sovereign to imprint civil doctrine in them through teaching, thereby increasing the chances of influencing subjects’ (free) deliberation, and thus of producing obedience.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Governing of Opinions

Oliveira

2022

Disputatio

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Thomas Hobbes and the problem of exemplarity: from the early engagement with historiography to Leviathan

Rasmussen

2023

History of European Ideas

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Hobbes and Spinoza on Sovereign Education

Kabala

Cook

2022

Philosophies

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Most comparisons of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza focus on the difference in understanding of natural right. We argue that Hobbes also places more weight on a rudimentary and exclusive education of the public by the state. We show that the difference is related to deeper disagreements over the prospect of Enlightenment. Hobbes is more sanguine than Spinoza about using the state to make people rational. Spinoza considers misguided an overemphasis on publicly educating everyone out of superstition—public education is important, but modes of superstition may remain and must be offset by institutions and a civil religion. The differences are confirmed by Spinoza’s interest in the philosopher who stands apart and whose flourishing may be protected, but not simply brought about, by rudimentary public education. Spinoza’s openness to a wisdom-loving elite in a democracy also sets up an interesting parallel with Thomas Jefferson’s own commitment to the natural aristocracy needed to sustain republicanism. In demonstrating the 17th century philosopher’s skepticism toward using the state exclusively to promote rationality, even as he recognizes the importance of a sovereign pedagogical role and the protection of philosophy, we move to suggest that Spinoza is relevant to contemporary debates about public education and may reinvigorate moral and political discourse in a liberal democracy.

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Thomas Hobbes and ‘gently instilled’ conscience

Cited by 3 publications

References 30 publications

The Governing of Opinions

The Governing of Opinions

Thomas Hobbes and the problem of exemplarity: from the early engagement with historiography to Leviathan

Hobbes and Spinoza on Sovereign Education

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