ABSTRACT
This chapter explicates Hobbes’s theory of new foundations in chapter xii and, therein, the place of wisdom, sincerity, love, and divine revelation. Xii appears to baldly disagree with seeming axioms of Hobbes’s interpretation: the idea of natural/political equality (xii indicating that there are crucial inequalities of persons), that justice cannot exist before the sovereign (xii indicating that there is something like natural justice), and that there is no real distinction between regimes by institution and conquest, as both rest on a pervasive fear (xii attesting that it is a fundamental distinction). On each count, this chapter shows that the axioms do not hold, and each fails in ways that support the theory of foundations found in xii.
