De Homine: «quasi ad præcipitium». The Autonomy of Hobbes’ political philosophy

Abstract

The various sections of the Elementorum Philosophiae were not published in the intended systematic order; namely, according to the deductive order that had to shape the Hobbesian project of philosophical system (De Corpore-De Homine-De Cive) and insofar Hobbes’s Political Philosophy came to light long before the rest of his work. Hereunto arises the problem of systematicity, which far from being a simple bibliographic anecdote, has been a source of fragmentary readings and an ideological encapsulation of Hobbes’s work. In this sense, the paper proposes a reading based on an internal criteria to the work itself, based on the recognition of the autonomy of Hobbesian political philosophy.