Hobbes and Hats
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: There is no more analyzed image in the history of political thought than the frontispiece of Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651), yet the tiny figures making up the giant have largely escaped scholarly attention. So, too, have their hats. This article recovers what men’s failure to “doff and don” their hats in the frontispiece might have conveyed to readers about their relationship to the Sovereign and each other. Sometimes big ideas—about the nature of representation, for example, or how to “acknowledge” equality—are conveyed by small gestures. When situated textually and contextually, Hobbes’s hats shed important light on the micropolitics of everyday interaction for those who, like Hobbes himself, hope to securely constitute a society of equals.
Author: TERESA M. BEJAN
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,255
OpenAlex ID: W4317829618