ABSTRACT
The novelty of Professor Hood's approach consists of an attempt to 'make sense' of Hobbes by considering all of his writings on morals and politics 'as a whole'. The major assumption has to be that all of Hobbes's writings can be regarded as being in the same mode. This does lead to some fruitful reconsideration of the relations between Leviathan and the other incarnations of Hobbes's views on ethics and politics. Professor Hood deals with an elucidation of the nature of human nature; proceeds with a discussion of the Laws of Nature; and ends with a consideration of the validating grounds of men's obedience. The investigation proceeds exclusively by rationalizations of texts; it makes no pretence of considering the intellectual relations between Hobbes's work and other political discourse of the age. Hobbes's position still involves him in a tradition of discourse, even if he was to be the cause mainly of a re-assertion of a contrary tradition.
