THE EXPLANATION OF CONFLICT IN HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN
THE EXPLANATION OF CONFLICT IN HOBBES’S LEVIATHAN

Summary/Abstract: Thomas Hobbes’s thesis of the necessity of an absolute sovereign, put forward in Leviathan (1651), rests upon the argument that the condition of anarchy is a condition of violent conflict. It is therefore crucial for Hobbes to demonstrate that men, despite being predominantly rational creatures, are unable to arrange and keep cooperative agreements without enforcement by the state. In recent decades it has been fashionable to explain Hobbes’s account of conflict with game-theoretical tools borrowed from modern economics. This article accepts the application of game theory as a legitimate and useful way of studying Hobbes, but argues that the commentators have often strayed too far from Hobbes’s own text, misrepresenting his fundamental psychological and ethical premises. The article is an attempt to rectify that. After an outline of Hobbes’s account of conflict and a critical survey of its current game-theoretical interpretations, it suggests a novel game-theoretical explanation, which, the author hopes, is a more precise representation of what Hobbes actually says in Leviathan.

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