Behemoth
Hobbes's history of the English Civil War — written c.1668, published 1681 posthumous
Tradition: Early-modern philosophy / Political history
Hobbes's history of the English Civil War
Behemoth, or The Long Parliament (composed c. 1668, suppressed by Charles II from publication during Hobbes's lifetime, published posthumously 1681 in unauthorised pirated editions and properly in 1682) is Thomas Hobbes's (1588-1679) historical-political dialogue on the English Civil War period — covering 1640 (the convening of the Long Parliament) through 1660 (the Restoration of Charles II). The text is structured as a four-part dialogue between an unnamed master and his student, with the master narrating-and-interpreting the political-religious history of the period from a position consistent with the materialist-political-realist framework of Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). The work develops Hobbes's distinctive interpretation of the wars' causation: (1) the seditious teaching of Presbyterian and Independent ministers, who taught the people they could obey their consciences and the gathered congregational vote against the established political-religious authority; (2) the Catholic-Papal-conspiracy element, with Jesuits and Catholic-leaning Anglicans similarly subverting sovereign authority; (3) the late-scholastic-Aristotelian university curriculum, which Hobbes regards as a major engine of seditious political thought through its mixed-government and natural-law doctrines; (4) the political-economic ambition of the merchant-and-gentry class, particularly in London; (5) the political incompetence of the Stuart monarchy itself, particularly Charles I's failure to consolidate sovereign authority decisively before the crisis broke. Hobbes's diagnosis is consistently sovereignty-monist: civil war can be prevented only by a unified, undivided sovereign authority (whether monarchical, aristocratic, or democratic in form), and the religious, intellectual, and economic forces that promote any rival authority within the commonwealth must be brought under control by the sovereign. Charles II's suppression of the work in 1668 reflects partly his recognition that the analysis was politically dangerous (because it would offend royalist as well as parliamentary sensibilities) and partly his sensitivity about Hobbes's continued ill-repute after Leviathan's controversial reception. Behemoth has been read since as one of the most important and most idiosyncratic primary-source seventeenth-century histories of the English Civil Wars.
Author
Editions cited
- Behemoth, or The Long Parliament (London, 1681 unauthorised pirated; London, 1682 authorised posthumous; manuscript circulated 1668)
- Tönnies edition: Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies (London, 1889; reissued M. M. Goldsmith Frank Cass 1969)
- Critical edition: Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, ed. Paul Seaward, Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes vol. 10 (Oxford, 2010)
- Translations into German, French, Italian, Spanish
School Embodiments
Major political-realist historical work.
"Political-realist analysis of English Civil War." (Behemoth)
Major historical-political work.
"Historical-political analysis of mid-seventeenth-century England." (Behemoth)
Continued social-contract framework.
"Civil War analysis as failure of proper social-contract." (Behemoth)
Critical analysis of religion's political role.
"Critical engagement with Puritan religious-political causes." (Behemoth)
Continued materialist-philosophical framework.
"Materialist framework applied to political history." (Behemoth)
Limited classical-liberal commitments.
"Limited classical-liberal sympathies." (Behemoth)
Mechanist tradition.
Social-contract tradition.
Internal Tensions
Behemoth has been read since as a major idiosyncratic seventeenth-century historical-and-political source. Charles II's suppression of the work reflects its political dangerousness — its critique was aimed at both parliamentary-Presbyterian and royalist-establishment positions. Modern Hobbes scholarship (Quentin Skinner, Noel Malcolm, Paul Seaward) has restored Behemoth to centrality alongside Leviathan as essential to understanding Hobbes's mature political thought.
I. Time
Composed c. 1668; suppressed during Hobbes's lifetime (he died 1679); published posthumously 1681-82; covers events 1640-1660.
Attributes
II. Space
London composition; subsequent transnational seventeenth-century-history and political-theory readership.
Attributes
III. Matter
The English Civil War period — its religious, intellectual, political-economic, and dynastic-incompetence causes; the role of Presbyterian and Independent ministers, of universities, of the merchant-and-gentry class, of the Stuart monarchy's own failures.
Attributes
IV. Observer
Late Hobbes (in his late seventies-and-early-eighties) writing a historical-political analysis of the events he had lived through and analysed throughout his theoretical-political work.
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V. Energy
Polemical-historical, sovereignty-monist-systematic, didactic-pedagogical (dialogue-form) energies.
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VI. Information
Four-part dialogue between master and student; combines historical-narrative, political-theoretical-analysis, and pedagogical-instructional forms; aimed at educated political-readership.
Attributes
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Behemoth resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 6 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas, all mainstream
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.