Conclusion

Abstract

There is a seeming paradox concerning the current state of scholarship on the thought of Thomas Hobbes. On the one hand, more people know more about Hobbes’s thought than ever before. On the other hand, the interpretations of his thought have never been so various and so unlikely to be settled. We have seen him characterized as a democratic theorist and as an anti-democrat; as a proponent of religious toleration and freedom of conscience and as an enemy of them; as an atheist, theist, agnostic and Christian; and as an Anglican and as an Independent. He has been described as a rationalist in science and, alternatively, as an empiricist. His scientific theories have been judged to have no merit, and to be as plausible as those of his opponents, given the cultural context. He has been judged to be a competent and even talented mathematician, but also to be an incompetent one. In this book, we have considered many of the arguments and surveyed a large part of the literature that argue for these various views. On my interpretation, Hobbes is a democrat with respect to the foundations of political theory and an absolutist with respect to sovereign power; an English Calvinist with a preference for the episcopal Church of England; a scientific rationalist with an empiricist foundation; and a competent mathematician. But I expect almost every reader to disagree with some aspect of this interpretation.