‘Law and Authority’: A Political and Legal Paradigm by Thomas Hobbes and its Different Receptions in the USA, Canada, Britain and Germany since 1989

AbstractThomas Hobbes's Leviathan is one of the few grand oeuvres representing the code of pre-modern political power. This code often legitimates our present understanding of law and state. Therefore it is necessary to discover the 'socialisation' of the interpreters—that is the impact of social, cognitive interests within scientific interpretations—so as to improve our understanding in a more differentiated way. The author demonstrates this in relation to three different discourses on Leviathan conducted in North America, Britain and Germany during the last 25 years. He thereby shows how the 'socialisation' of the interpreters is manifest in these particular discourses, and what this means to a reader's critical comprehension when he or she tries to understand an opus such as Leviathan by merely reading secondary literature.