Hobbes i republikanizam: Levijatan protiv Commonwealtha
Hobbes and Republicanism: Leviathan versus Commonwealth

Summary/Abstract: The text problematizes Hobbes’s relation towards republicanism. This is carried out in three stages. The first stage shows the form in which republican ideas were present in English political thought in the first half of the 17th century. It turns out that, prior to the publication of Leviathan in 1651, there was no coherent anti-monarchic republican theory in England. Still, English political thought was familiar with its individual elements and those elements had a major influence on the course of the constitutional crisis and the civil war itself. The second stage provides an analysis of Hobbes’s criticism of two republican ideas which he deems particularly fatal to the survival of the state. The first idea is the ideal of mixed government, which Hobbes rejects as incompatible with the fundamental condition of state preservation, namely indivisible sovereign power. Thereafter, relying on Skinner’s analysis, the author outlines Hobbes’s criticism of the republican conception of liberty, which is at the core of the attack on monarchy as a form of state incompatible with the liberty of citizens. In contrast to such a perception, Hobbes constructs a completely novel definition of liberty, which enables him to show that the liberty of citizens is equal in democracy, aristocracy and monarchy. Finally, the third stage inquires into the implications of Hobbes’s criticism of republicanism with regard to the conceptual field of his mature theory of the state. Emphasis is put on the assertion that this criticism does not also imply a rejection of democracy as a form of state. Indeed, the analysis shows that, within the framework of Hobbes’s theory of the state, criticism of republicanism, perceived as vindication of the state, is prerequisite to the existence of democracy itself.

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