Teaching the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on education

This paper considers Thomas Hobbes's educational thought both in its historical context and in the context of his political philosophy as a whole. It begins with Hobbes's diagnosis of the English Civil War as the product of the miseducation of the commonwealth and shows that education was a central and consistent concern of his political theory from an early stage. For Hobbes, the consensus on civil matters required for peace could be secured only through rigorous and universal civic education overseen by the sovereign in the universities, the pulpit, and the family alike. While some scholars have condemned Hobbesian education as unacceptably authoritarian, others have cited it approvingly as evidence for a more liberal Hobbes. This essay argues that neither reading adequately grasps the subtle relationship between persuasion and authority that characterises Hobbes's conception of education and, indeed, his political philosophy more generally.