Thomas Hobbes's “highway to peace”

Donald W. Hanson

International Organization, 1984, vol. 38, issue 2, 329-354

Abstract: It is widely agreed that the work of Thomas Hobbes established and continues to nourish the tradition of “realism” in international political theory. But this association is in many ways paradoxical, and above all because Hobbes's avowed purpose was to “show us the highway to peace.” It is usually assumed that he aimed exclusively at internal peace while resigning himself to permanent rivalry among states, but there are a good many indications that this may not be an adequate interpretation. Hobbes devoted substantial effort to explicating several modifications of the inherited intellectual tradition, in both politics and education, that seem to have been intended to promote beneficial effects in interstate relations. When these substantive aims are taken into account, rather different lessons seem to emerge. One, in particular, is that it may be misleading to think of the Hobbesian tradition as one of realism.

Date: 1984
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