Thomas Hobbes and Political Secularism: A Critical Engagement

Abstract:Scholars of early modern toleration are divided about Hobbes’s role in the development of modern secularism. Much of this debate focuses on whether we should see Hobbes as a modest defender or enemy of toleration, while often neglecting an engagement with critical secularism studies inaugurated by Talal Asad’s work. Bringing the insights provided by these new perspectives on secular power to bear upon the analysis of Hobbes’s position, this article argues that Hobbes’s work in fact includes a poignant early theorization of secular power that anticipates the operations and tensions of political secularism more accurately than more normatively-inclined early modern theories of toleration. Hobbes’s arguments on this topic are developed in the course of the evolution of his thinking on military duties from Leviathan to Behemoth, culminating in a distinct model of religious reconstruction. Situating this model at the center of Hobbes’s contributions to the development of political secularism, the article thus makes a case for the value of cultivating more robust disciplinary interactions between histories of political thought and critical analysis of secular power.