Il Leviathan e la guerra civile inglese

The theme of civil war in Hobbes’ Leviathan is explored from the perspective of the tension arising between the demands of conceptual normativity and the pressures of biographical and historical contingency. By highlighting the constant and profound connection between Hobbes’ political theory and the English civil war, this essay investigates Hobbes’ interpretation of the civil war as an historical manifestation of the hypothetical notion of the state of nature. The causes of the civil war and the inseparable relation between political obedience and the protection guaranteed by the sovereign to his subjects are investigated. Hobbes’ unique intellectual position emerges as that of a thinker who in his project of a stable and well-ordered Commonwealth, draws on a conceptual framework that was revolutionary for his time.