Abstract

Our understanding of Hobbes is pivotal to our grasp of modernity, and yet we misunderstand him. Specifically, we have misconstrued the way his philosophy exemplifies modern political reason. Contrary to the conventional view, Hobbes should not be thought of as the first modern political scientist. His works are not abstract schema devoted to explaining the logic of commonwealths or the actions of rationally self-interested actors. Rather than explanatory, Hobbes's science was didactic: it was written to craft and fashion obedient selves. His works teach political duties and/or strive to persuade the sovereign that his doctrine ought to be taught in the schools---to the exclusion of all others. Hobbes's promise of a peaceable commonwealth required that his doctrine become the political education for England's elite. I illustrate parallels between Hobbes and contemporaries also interested in reeducating England . To reinforce and complement this reading, I defend a new interpretation of his science. Hobbes's approach to geometry, I argue, attaches certainty to what we can make. He uses mathematics to pursue a constructed, rather than a natural, order. He was, therefore, more concerned with imposing an order he designed himself than with predicting nature's. With this new reading I hope to change our perceptions of the origins of modern science and the relationship between science and politics in modernity. My approach is both philosophical and historical, and I hope it will interest persons concerned with modernity, the construction of the modern subject, political education, politics and literature, the history of science, and critiques of modern political rationalism