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Cycles

The Relation Between Liberty and Power in Thomas Hobbes’s Late Works

Edited by Roger Castellanos Corbera

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Published 31 May 2027

About this book

Examines Thomas Hobbes’ conception of liberty and power as a central and evolving problem in his political philosophy

  • Provides a detailed analysis of the concepts of liberty and power in Hobbes’s political thought
  • Offers novel interpretative insights into Hobbes’s political philosophy
  • Engages critically with the main accounts in Hobbesian scholarship on these topics

Focusing on Hobbes’s late works, this collection argues that his account of liberty cannot be understood apart from his conception of power. Reconstructing the philosophical and historical sources of these concepts the volume also considers their implications for debates on human sociability and the limits of civil liberty under sovereignty. In dialogue with existing scholarship, the contributors reassess the place of liberty and power within Hobbes’s political theory.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

Preface
Philip Pettit

Editorial Introduction: More Power, More Liberty?
Roger Castellanos Corbera

Part I: Wellsprings
1. The Metaphysical Foundation of the New Galilean Science. The Concept of ‘Potentia’ and the Doctrine of Categories in Hobbes’s Philosophy
Carlo Altini
2. Potentia, Potestas and Libertas. Medieval Background
María L. Lukac de Stier
3. Hobbes on Liberty and Power: The Cases of Lucca and Constantinople
Liang Pang

Part II: Confluences
4. Comparative Power, Magnanimity, and Liberty
Sandra Leonie Field
5. Echolocation, or the Rating of the Master: Power, Liberty and the Call for Help in Leviathan, Parts I and II
James Griffith
6. Thomas Hobbes’s Sociology of Power
Maria Isabel Limongi

Part III: Banks or Vessels
7. Two Concepts of Liberty and One Author. Liberty and Power in Hobbes
Andrés Di Leo Razuk
8. The Liberty of Sovereignty in Hobbes’s Political Theory
Richard A. Lee, Jr
9. Leviathan of Leviathans: A New International Order
Antoni Abat Ninet

Notes on Contributors
Index

About the author

Roger Castellanos Corbera

Roger Castellanos Corbera is an Adjunct Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the Universitat de Barcelona. His research focuses on the history of modern and contemporary political philosophy, with a special interest in Hobbes. He serves as Scientific Secretary of the Bulletin Hobbes, published by the Hobbes Scholars International Association (Centre Thomas Hobbes, Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne, directed by Prof. Yves Charles Zarka). Together with Professor Josep Monserrat Molas, he has edited and translated the first Catalan critical edition of Leviathan from the English and Latin texts (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2026). He has also published articles and book chapters on Hobbes’s political philosophy in Catalan, Spanish, and English, in journals such as Convivium. Revista de Filosofia, Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy, Boletín de la Asociación de Estudios Hobbesianos, and the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, as well as with publishers including Brill and Síntesis.

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