Hobbes on the Ethic and Jurisprudence of Life 1

In this chapter, I argue that Hobbesian philosophy should be understood as an ethic and jurisprudence of life. There is a tradition of reading Hobbes as a prochoice philosopher, from John Bramhall to various contemporary legal and political theorists. While there are some texts in Hobbes’s corpus that apparently point in that direction, I argue that these readers of Hobbes have misinterpreted him. A close analysis of Hobbes’s theories of philosophical anthropology, moral theory, personhood, positive law, and judgment demonstrates that Hobbes’s principles entail prolife conclusions about the ethics and lawfulness of abortion.