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Subverting the Leviathan : Reading Thomas Hobbes As a Radical Democrat by James Martel, James R. Martel is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Subverting the Leviathan : Reading Thomas Hobbes As a Radical Democrat about?

In __Leviathan__, Thomas Hobbes's landmark work on political philosophy, James Martel argues that although Hobbes pays lip service to the superior interpretive authority of the sovereign, he consistently subverts this authority throughout the book by returning it to the reader. Martel demonstrates that Hobbes's radical method of reading not only undermines his own authority in the text, but, by extension, the authority of the sovereign as well. To make his point, Martel looks closely at Hobbes's understanding of religious and rhetorical representation. In __Leviathan__, idolatry is not just a matter of worshipping images but also a consequence of bad reading. Hobbes speaks of the "error of separated essences," in which a sign takes precedence over the idea or object it represents, and warns that when the sign is given such agency, it becomes a disembodied fantasy leading to a "kingdom of darkness." To combat such idolatry, Hobbes offers a method of reading in which one resists the rhetorical manipulation of figures and tropes and recognizes the codes and structures of language for what they are-the only way to convey a fundamental inability to ever know "the thing itself." Making t

Who reads Subverting the Leviathan : Reading Thomas Hobbes As a Radical Democrat?

Author

James Martel, James R. Martel

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published

2007

Language

EN

ISBN

9780231519694

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Science, Philosophy, Memoir