Abstract

In successive versions of Hobbes's political teaching we see a changing account of the nature of rhetoric, or eloquence, and of the dangers it poses for political life. In his Leviathan Hobbes expresses a new confidence that the causes of political dissolution can in principle be entirely eradicated. I argue that Hobbes's new hope is based on his account of the problem of rhetoric and of the solution to that problem developed in Leviathan. I also examine two recent and important accounts of Hobbes's understanding of rhetoric by Quentin Skinner and David Johnston.