Citation

Luban D. J. Hist. Ideas 2024; 85(2): 185-208.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, University of Pennsylvania Press)

DOI

10.1353/jhi.2024.a926146

PMID

38708646

Abstract

This article examines Thomas Hobbes's notorious claim that "fear and liberty are consistent" and therefore that agreements coerced by threat of violence are binding. This view is to a surprising extent inherited from Aristotle, but its political implications became especially striking in the wake of the English Civil War, and Hobbes recast his theory in far-reaching ways between his early works and Leviathan to accommodate it. I argue that Hobbes's account of coercion is both philosophically safe from the most common objections to it and politically superior to the seemingly commonsensical alternatives that we have inherited from Hobbes's critics.

Language: en

Keywords

*Coercion; *Military Personnel/history; England; History, 19th Century; History, 20th Century; Humans; Prisoners/history/psychology; Violence/history/psychology