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A Bridge between Art and Philosophy: The Case of Thomas Hobbes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2022

Quentin Skinner*
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK. Email: q.skinner@qmul.ac.uk

Abstract

The leading question raised by the rhetoricians of classical antiquity was how to speak with maximum persuasive force. You must find the means, they answered, to enable your readers to see what you are arguing. This initially gave rise to a preoccupation with visual metaphors and other so-called figures of speech. Much later, with the development of the printed book, this also led to the practice of inserting actual figures into books to provide visual summaries of their arguments. Here, one pioneer was Thomas Hobbes, and this article offers an interpretation of the frontispieces he included in his two main works of political philosophy, De cive and Leviathan. The moral Hobbes aims to convey is that we have no alternative but to submit to the protecting power of the sovereign state if we wish to live in security and peace.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academia Europaea

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