Thomas Hobbes and the problem of exemplarity: from the early engagement with historiography to Leviathan

Abstract

This article traces Hobbes’s account of ‘exemplarity’ from his early writings to Leviathan. It argues that, by tracking Hobbes’s changing views on exemplarity, we get a better grasp on how he construed the effective conditions of an enduring peace in 1651. While these conditions are compatible with the formal structure of sovereignty, they remain distinct from it. I start by inserting Hobbes’s early engagement with historiography in the context of the ‘crisis of exemplarity’ of the late Renaissance. Whereas prior engagement with antiquity had relied on a notion of exemplarity as historical particulars embodying general norms to be imitated in a contemporary setting, a dissatisfaction with this model, characteristic of a revived interest in Tacitus, appears in the sixteenth century. Initially adhering to this ‘Tacitean’ scheme of political theory, Hobbes ended up abandoning exemplarity as the foundational model of politics in Elements of Law and De cive. However, Leviathan reintroduced the scheme of exemplarity as a strategy of effective government. This strategy is based on a retrieval of the sovereign’s appearance as a moral exemplum to be imitated by the subjects. Lastly, I suggest that this change stems from the altered conditions of government at the end of the 1640s.