Jonathan Boyd - The Lion and the Ox: Engaging with Hobbes

This talk will discuss some key but often neglected concepts of Thomas Hobbes that are highlighted by Michael Oakeshott’s engagement with Leo Strauss on Hobbes, particularly the question whether Hobbes is a moralist of the common good or a moralist of individuality. In a chapter of a forthcoming edited volume on Hobbes and international political thought, my interpretation of Oakeshott is appealed to in order to place Hobbes more broadly in a genealogy of 'reflexive realism'. This emerging theory in International Relations is one which has been used to both refute neoconservative foreign policy in general and, in particular, to criticize the Iraq war. I will discuss this usage of my interpretation in a suggestive fashion.