Ioannis D. Evrigenis. Images of Anarchy

The subject of Ioannis D. Evrigenis’s Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature is Thomas Hobbes’s notion of the state of nature, that condition in which human beings are not constrained by any laws. Because no action, including killing and taking what other people control, breaks any law in such a condition and because at least most human beings act on behalf of their short-term, self-interested good, human life in the state of nature is miserable. Evrigenis uses the concept of the state of nature to provide a perspective from which to view a large part of Hobbes’s philosophy, rhetoric, history, analyses of scripture (especially, the condition of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel), and perceptions of early-seventeenth-century American natives. His command of the relevant texts and of their scholarly interpretations is unsurpassed, and he engages with both in subtle ways. If Evrigenis fails to convince most scholars, it is because of the nature of the beast, Hobbes’s shape-shifting philosophy.

Action (physics) · Art · Epistemology · Perspective (graphical) · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · State (computer science) · State of nature · Subject (documents) · Theology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy