Abstract

Edwin Curley opens the “Introduction” of his new edition of Leviathan with the following assertion: “Hobbes has suffered a fate shared by many classic authors. His greatest work is more often quoted then carefully and thoroughly read.” Hobbes, it seems, has suffered additional indignities that many classic authors have not. A critical edition is underway which will be published by Clarendon Press at Oxford. So far, the Latin and English versions of De Cive have appeared. Before this undertaking, the last critical edition of Hobbes' complete works was the excellent, but highly flawed English & Latin Works edited by W. Molesworthy in 1839-45. With the exception of the ever-present Leviathan, his works have gone in and out of availability in various editions of varied merit. The Molesworthy edition itself is most commonly found in a German reprint. The standards for textual criticism are being set by French scholars, and a complete, critical and up-to-date Hobbes will probably appear in French translation before it does in English and Latin. German political philosophers such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck, and Ernst Bloch have been actively engaged with Hobbes' claims, for obvious reasons, in a way that the Anglo-American literature is not. Hence it is a cause for rejoicing that this excellent “student edition” of Hobbes' “greatest” work has appeared.