Thomas Hobbes and the Reformation Natural Law Tradition

• In Event: Moderns and their History of Political Thought

Abstract

Hobbes scholars locate Hobbes's account of natural law within a medieval/scholastic natural law tradition. Typically, they discuss the ways Hobbes deviates from this tradition, and speculate upon the reasons for this deviation. In this paper, I present Reformation conceptions of natural law and I situate Hobbes's account in this different tradition. Reformers decoupled the scholastic connection obedience to law (works) and salvation, rendering the latter a matter of grace. They oriented natural law in the direction of temporal concerns and identified it as a rule of prudence. I maintain that Hobbes's account of natural law draws from this tradition and must be considered from within it.

Author

• Monicka Tutschka, California State University, Sacramento