History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes
by: Kraynak, Robert P.

Hardcover. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 224 pages. Robert Kraynak offers a radical reinterpretation of the political thought of Thomas Hobbes and a new assessment of Hobbes's contribution to the origins and problems of modernity. The author argues that it is necessary to examine a neglected facet of Hobbes's though his writings on history, especially Behemoth, his lengthy study of the English Civil War. Through a close reading of these works, Kraynak shows how Hobbes came to consider the possibility of a new kind of political science, one that is supremely confident of the power of critical reason to overcome the authorities of the past to build a new form of civilization yet uncertain about reason's foundations. In the first part of the book, Kraynak analyzes Hobbes's historical works and shows that they contain a coherent theory of the history of civilization whose central theme is the development of the human mind. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.