Abstract

_ Source: _Volume 28, Issue 1, pp 35 - 49 Three influential interpreters – Michael Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, and Carl Schmitt – note that Hobbes’s sovereign is tasked with containing the natural wills of subjects for the sake of civil peace. Yet Hobbes’s sovereign also has a mandate to govern or use his subjects for collective defence, and each suggest that the political-psychological means to ensure submission preclude and prevent the contribution of subjects towards collective ends, which would render Hobbes’s commonwealth near indefensible. This paper will argue instead that Hobbes does envision a way his sovereign could harness potentia publica: the sovereign must also instil an artificial will through civil honour, an artificial will that is necessary for the defence of the commonwealth.