David Thomas | Birkbeck College, University of London (original) (raw)
Very interested in Foucault at present.
less
Related Authors
Uploads
Papers by David Thomas
For Thomas Hobbes, violence is the natural condition of the human species, the war of all against... more For Thomas Hobbes, violence is the natural condition of the human species, the war of all against all its natural state. Writing Leviathan in the shadow of a long and brutal civil war and a much longer period of religious war in Europe, he constructed a truly radical theory of law, right and society based absolutely on the need to escape from violence, but buttressed and reasoned throughout on the basis of a selfish individualism that is always potentially violent. But, as Rancière points out in The Names of History, when Hobbes is building his theory certain persons are excluded, persons whose activities may threaten the structure; preachers who preach that you must make your own mind up as to right and wrong, persons who read the classics and thereby become troublemakers; these people must not be permitted to speak, must be excluded. The “politics of emancipation of the oppressed” is feared and excluded at every turn and its right to exist denied. Some of the Names of history are not to be heard. This foundational document for modern liberalism reveals a complex mix of violence, law, and fear of the demos that I will attempt to tease out in this paper.
Book Reviews by David Thomas
Published in the October 2016 edition of the Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities
For Thomas Hobbes, violence is the natural condition of the human species, the war of all against... more For Thomas Hobbes, violence is the natural condition of the human species, the war of all against all its natural state. Writing Leviathan in the shadow of a long and brutal civil war and a much longer period of religious war in Europe, he constructed a truly radical theory of law, right and society based absolutely on the need to escape from violence, but buttressed and reasoned throughout on the basis of a selfish individualism that is always potentially violent. But, as Rancière points out in The Names of History, when Hobbes is building his theory certain persons are excluded, persons whose activities may threaten the structure; preachers who preach that you must make your own mind up as to right and wrong, persons who read the classics and thereby become troublemakers; these people must not be permitted to speak, must be excluded. The “politics of emancipation of the oppressed” is feared and excluded at every turn and its right to exist denied. Some of the Names of history are not to be heard. This foundational document for modern liberalism reveals a complex mix of violence, law, and fear of the demos that I will attempt to tease out in this paper.
Published in the October 2016 edition of the Journal of Law, Culture and the Humanities