In “The Context of Hobbes's Theory of Political Obligation,” Quentin Skinner argues for two theses. The first is that Hobbes had many followers in England, France, and Holland during the seventeenth century. I agree with this thesis. Skinner's efforts to set the historical record straight put Hobbes scholars greatly in his debt. His second thesis is twofold. One is that Hobbes believed that “the obligation to obey a given government derived not from any religious sanction, but merely from a self-interested calculation made by each individual citizen”; the second is that human nature is “basically anti-social” (Skinner, 1972, pp. 116, 118). I accept the second as a brief statement of Hobbes's view and shall not discuss it further. I shall discuss the first, for I think it is mistaken. I shall not rehearse the evidence I have presented in Chapters 3 through 6 for my own interpretation but only discuss the quality of the evidence that Skinner presents for his.

What is partially at stake in this matter is the proper method for determining an interpretation. In the Introduction and Chapter 2, I indicated that the basis for a good interpretation of what a speaker means is a function of what he intends to communicate, and that what he intends to communicate is constrained by what his words mean and the context within which he utters them. That is to say, a proper interpretation of what an author means must focus on the meaning of the words he uses and the context in which he uses them.