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State capacity is a core concept in political science research, and it is widely recognized that state institutions exert considerable influence on outcomes such as economic development, civil conf...

The spate of violent clashes between nomadic pastoralists and agrarian communities in Nigeria raises a number of legal and policy questions that had been long overlooked. Issues arising from the phenomenon range from questions over constitutionally guaranteed rights such as the right to own property, to questions over the inadequacies of Nigeria’s security apparatus as well as calls for land use reforms. Additionally, due to the groups affected and the scale of casualties, the topic has become a political molten magma. The constant conflicts between nomadic pastoralists who are majorly from the Fulani ethnic group, and agrarian communities from other parts of the country have reached unprecedented levels leading to accusations of coordinated attempts at land grab, ethnic cleansing, jihad and insurgency, threatening the country’s security and stability in the process. Fiscally, the destruction of lives and property and the state of insecurity emanating from the clashes stood at $16 billion in potential revenue as at 2018. In no small measure have these clashes been precipitated by climate change and the consequent drought in the Sahara region. This paper analyses the role of the Nigerian state in balancing the interests of affected groups in the clashes and promoting development. At its core, it seeks to identify legal and policy gaps that require filling to put a definite end to the lingering crisis.

There is a reciprocal relationship between the advances in recording technology and film styles. This work shows the effects of action cameras on non-fiction cinema by comparing two films that focus on the lives of fishermen. While Drifters (1929) served as a prototype for documentary film, Leviathan (2012), completely shot with action cameras, is referred not only as an original documentary, but also an art film. This work argues that action cameras, with their unique technical advantages and wide usage, have the potential for leading profound changes in non-fiction cinema. Generally, few directors and producers who had the means of production could introduce new styles and manipulated the existing ones. However, currently action cameras with professional qualities are available for amateur usages. Easy mounting options and the ability to record everywhere let people try various shooting alternatives for producing authentic and original works. Through video sharing websites, a huge number of amateur people have the opportunity to share their works, receive feedback, and be inspired by other people’s productions concurrently. This provides the most fertile condition for improvement of personal video productions, and emergence of new visual styles and artistic approaches in non-fiction cinema., Film tarzları ile kayıt teknolojilerindeki gelişmeler arasında çift taraflı bir ilişki vardır. Bu çalışma balıkçıların yaşamlarına odaklanan iki filmi karşılaştırarak, aksiyon kameraların kurmaca olmayan sinemaya etkilerini gösterilmektedir. Drifter (1929) belgesel film için bir prototip olarak düşünülürken, tamamen aksiyon kameralar ile çekilmiş Leviathan (2012) sadece orijinal bir belgesel olarak değil aynı zamanda bir sanat filmi olarak bilinmektedir. Bu çalışmada, kendine özgü teknik özelliklere ve yaygın kullanıma sahip aksiyon kameraların, kurmaca olmayan sinemada derin değişimler yapabilecek potansiyele sahip olduğu iddia edilmektedir. Sinemada yeni tarz geliştiren veya var olan tarzları manipüle edebilmiş olanlar, genellikle üretim araçlarına sahip az sayıda yönetmen ve yapımcılardır. Ancak, günümüzde profesyonel niteliklere sahip aksiyon kameraların, amatörler tarafından kullanımı da mümkündür. Aksiyon kameraların, her yere kolay monte edilebilmeleri ve her koşulda kayıt yapabilmeleri, insanlara otantik ve orijinal görsel üretimler yapabilmeleri için farklı alternatif çekim denemelerine izin vermektedir. Video paylaşım siteleri vasıtasıyla, birçok amatör birey, çalışmalarını paylaşma, geri bildirim alma ve aynı zamanda diğer insanların çalışmalarından esinlenme fırsatına sahiptir. Bu durum, kişisel video yapımların gelişmesi, kurmaca olmayan sinemada yeni görsel tarzların ve sanatsal yaklaşımların ortaya çıkması için en verimli koşulu sağlamaktadır.

Leviathan by Andrey Zvyagintsev is a movie that depicts the world in a state of nature, with no prospects for creating a Hobbesian social contract. Set in the Russian peripheries, the film depicts a respected and caring family man who is gradually deprived of everything because of lack of political order with enforceable law and justice. The movie is a depiction of a contemporary “failed state”, equalized with the state of nature, where there is no legitimate power and violence remains the only tool to achieve goals both in private and public spheres. Religion consists of empty rituals that serve corrupt officials to maintain power. This world cannot last without innocent victims, scapegoats of the society, one of whom is the protagonist of the movie. This paper offers a legal and philosophical inquiry into the film, as it draws especially on the theory of the social contract proposed by Hobbes. It depicts a Russian town as a symbol of the state of nature as envisioned by Hobbes and describes the reasons why the social contract has not been made. According to Hobbes’s theory, in the state of nature concepts like justice and injustice do not convey any meaning; therefore, this paper investigates other: theological and anthropological concepts, to explore the meaning of Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan.

Based on the relationship between the powers of the state and society, this paper aims to identify the democratic components that positively and significantly impact the perception of corruption re...

The frontispiece of Hobbes'sLeviathanis justly renowned as a powerful visual advertisement for his political philosophy. Consequently, its rich imagery has been the subject of extensive scholarly commentary. Surprisingly, then, its gendered dimensions have received relatively limited attention. This essay explores this neglected facet of the frontispiece. I argue that the image initially appears to present a hypermasculine sovereign. However, upon closer inspection, and considered alongside Hobbes's economic theory, it yields to a reading of the sovereign as an ambiguously gendered figure. Reading the frontispiece through the prism of gender and the economy reveals not a static image of unwavering male power but rather one of an equivocally-sexed creature teeming with life, contradictions, and complexities worthy of continued examination.

This article attributes one of the three “first” editions of Leviathan to the London printer John Richardson (fl. 1673–1703), revising Noel Malcolm’s attribution to a different printer in the recent Clarendon Edition of Leviathan. We lay out the mystery of Leviathan’s so-called “Ornaments” edition and use evidence from damaged type pieces to say why we attribute its printing to Richardson. We then give a short sketch of Richardson’s life and career and present evidence that supports a new date for the edition, including newly discovered advertisements and evidence from deteriorating type. We conclude with some implications for book history and bibliography, on the one hand, and Hobbes scholarship on the other. We argue that what we call “computational bibliography”—the analysis of bibliographical evidence through computational methods such as machine learning and computer vision— offers new angles for seeing the materiality and craft of clandestine, anonymously-printed books like Hobbes’ Leviathan.

This article aspires to make two original contributions to the vast literature on Hobbes’s account of the nature and person of the commonwealth: (1) I provide the first systematic analysis of his changing conception of ‘person’; and (2) use it to show that those who claim that the Hobbesian commonwealth is created by personation by fiction misconstrue his theory of the state. Whereas Elements/De Cive advance a metaphysics-based distinction between individuals (‘natural persons’) and corporations (‘civil persons’), from Leviathan onwards Hobbes contrasts individuals acting in their own name (‘natural persons’) with representatives (‘artificial persons’). These changes notwithstanding, Hobbes retains the same corporate conception of the state throughout. On the prevailing ‘fictionalist’ interpretation, the sovereign brings the commonwealth into existence by representing it. I argue, rather, that as an incorporation of natural persons, the commonwealth becomes one person through the authorized (i.e. non-fictitious) representation of each constituent member singly by one common representative (‘the sovereign’). ispartof: History of European Ideas vol:47 issue:1 pages:17-32 status: published

The image of Leviathan held a special fascination for artists who decorated wooden synagogues and illustrated manuscripts from the eighteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century in Eastern Europe. They usually depicted this biblical and Talmudic creature as a giant fish coiled round in a circle. A leviathan of the same shape appears at first in Jewish manuscripts produced in Germany and regions under the cultural influence of German Jews in the thirteenth century. The appearance of this image was inspired, probably, by piyutim (liturgical songs) written in this time in the same region. The Jewish commentary tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries demonstrates a renewed surge of interest in this particular creature. It can be assumed that the special interest in Leviathan, both in the verbal and in the visual tradition, was correlated with the expectation of messianic times. The Leviathan represents the only image in the vault paintings of wooden synagogues that possesses a direct connection to traditional texts and manifests continuity with the Middle Ages visual traditions. In light of this, investigation into the Leviathan image in synagogue paintings is of special significance. The use of this image by Jewish artists may also shed indirect light on the meaning of other depictions that are compositionally related, and thus furnish a partial answer to the intriguing questions of the character and significance of those paintings. The present article is devoted to precisely these aspects of the Leviathan image; i.e., the genesis of its form and its semantics in synagogue paintings.

This paper offers a novel interpretation of the political implications of Hobbes’s theory of imagination and his solution to the threat posed by the imagination to political stability. While recent work has correctly identified the problem the imagination poses for Hobbes, it has underestimated the severity of the problem and, accordingly, has underestimated the length to which the Hobbesian sovereign will have to go in order to solve it. By reconstructing Hobbes’s account of sleep and the operation of the imagination during sleep, this paper argues that the Hobbesian sovereign who seeks to solve the problem of the imagination must maintain his subjects in a ‘state of sleep,’ by preventing any kind of new inputs from disturbing their imagination. This solution suggests that the citizens of the Leviathan state are not sleeping sovereigns, but rather sleeping subjects.

The study focuses on individual episodes of the biography, the most notable ideas and main socio-political views of the outstanding English scientist, social philosopher, theorist of the origin of the state – T. Hobbes. On the basis of the classic work “Leviathan”, his backbone thoughts on the processes of state building, the development of a balanced normative and legislative system and specific motives for striving for power are highlighted. In particular, attention is focused on the search by the researcher of the optimal balance between freedom and the duties of a citizen. The aspiration of the classic to a comprehensive study of the most effective mechanism, optimal forms of public administration, primarily for the establishment of stable social order and safety, is noted. The scientist emphasized that an authoritative, sovereign, legitimate state is able to effective cope with the tasks set. In which those in power are obliged to be guided by norms of morality and law. Characterized, according to the researcher, the socio-psychological traits of both average citizens and sovereigns for the full life support of the country.Highlighted his heuristic principles of anthropomorphism, which more metaphorically, expressively detail the likely destructive diseases of the state, among which he considered the lack of frugality and the processes of oligarchization of the socio-political system to be especially unsafe. Scientists emphasized the absolute rejection of corruption, lack of social justice, abuse of power. Thus, the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of government were highlighted, in particular, monarchical, aristocratic, democratic. The scientists himself was an active supporter of absolute monarchy and the unshakable authority of the state. At the same time, he focused not so much on the duties of citizens to the state, as on the duties of state representatives to their citizens, the implementation of which can state structure effective, authoritative and legitimate. At the same time, the contribution of T. Hobbes to the development of the philosophy of law is highlighted. In general, it was emphasized that the English scientist comprehensively substantiated his own thought about the immutability of human nature in the form of manifestations of selfishness, individualism, insatiable appetites, unrestrained passions, and the desire for social change. According to the philosopher, only a just, sovereign, authoritative state is capable of curbing the negative manifestations of human nature. In addition, attention focused on the state-forming nature of his philosophy and the scientist’s significant contribution to the development of the theory of the social contract or the contractual origin of the state is highlighted.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of the Federal Reserve as a leading actor in global economic governance. As a creature of U.S. domestic law with an international presence and operational independence, the Fed wields authority without a well-defined international legal status, international legal standards to guide its conduct, or accountability to those around the world affected by its decisions. This Essay explores three conceptual approaches that could be used to develop norms, standards, and principles to address this gap.

Climate Leviathan argues that to address the climate crisis we must extend the critique of capitalism and that to imagine a just world we need radically open democracy. This reviewer shares the boo...

“Economic Leviathan”: Arnaud Orain marshalled the felicitous phrase in his recent book La politique du merveilleux (18), and it goes a long way toward capturing the extraordinary reconfiguration of French commercial, fiscal, financial, and imperial arrangements that was envisaged under the Regency of Philippe d’Orleans. At its apex in 1720, a single joint stock company had acquired exclusive access to the vast majority of France’s global trade and exercised powers associated with sovereign au...

Dogma is an ever-present danger to reason and rationality. In times of climate emergency and the dawn of a new geological era known as the Anthropocene, dogma becomes particularly disabling and dan...

Siyaset Bilimi alanyazınında, Thomas Hobbes ve onun yazarlık veriminin doruk noktası olarak kabul gören Leviathan eseri üzerine, fazlaca çalışma bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmalarda genellikle; doğa durumu, doğa yasaları, devlet, egemenlik, meşruiyet, iktidar, otorite gibi kavramların üzerinde durulmakta ve Hobbes’un ortaya koyduğu devlet anlayışının olma/oluşturulma boyutu ile birlikte devletin kökeni derinlemesine ele alınmaktadır. Hobbes ve Leviathan eseri üzerine çalışma yapmak, şüphesiz Siyaset Bilimi’ne ilişkin kavram setlerini ele almayı gerektirmektedir. Ancak bu haliyle Hobbes’un Leviathan eserinde, sözleşme ile oluşturulan yapay bir insan olarak tanımladığı devletin, işleyişine ve yönetimine ilişkin kısımlar eksik kalmaktadır. Dolayısıyla Hobbes’un Leviathan eseri üzerinden ortaya koyduğu devlet anlayışını çalışmak; bir yandan devlet, egemenlik, meşruiyet, iktidar, otorite gibi kavramlar üzerinde durmayı gerektirirken, diğer yandan Yönetim Bilimi’ne ilişkin kamusal kuruluşlar, kamu görevlileri, yetki, sorumluluk, emir-tavsiye, danışmanlık gibi kavramlar üzerine bir okumayı da gerektirmektedir. Diğer bir deyişle Hobbes’un devlet anlayışı üzerine çalışmak, hem “olma” hem de “yapma” boyutlarıyla eserde devletin oluşumunun ve işleyişinin temel ilkeleri üzerinde durmayı gerektirmektedir. Bu çalışmada, Hobbes’un devletin kökenine ilişkin getirdiği açıklamalar ile birlikte devletin varoluşsal nedeni ortaya konulmakta ve sonrasında, oluşturulan devletin işleyişine ilişkin kamusal kuruluşlar, devletin organları ve eklemleri olarak adlandırılan kamu görevlileri, bu organ ve eklemleri hareket ettiriciler olarak adlandırılan cezalar ve ödüller ile emir ve tavsiye sözcüklerinin analizi sonucunda çerçevesi çizilen danışmanlık olgusu ele alınmaktadır. Bunun nedeni, toplumsal sözleşme sonucu var edilen devletin işleyişinin hangi ilkelere göre kurgulandığını keşfetmektir. Çalışmada ayrıca, Hobbes’un hayatı ve yaşadığı dönemin tarihsel koşulları da ele alınmaktadır. Buradaki amaç, düşünür ve eserine ilişkin bütüncül bir yaklaşım geliştirmektir.

The essay discusses personhood from the point of view of a critical history of representation and advocacy, focusing on Hobbes’s Leviathan, ch. I, XVI. Before introducing the constitutive concept o...

This paper asks whether scarcity increases violence in markets that lack a centralized authority. We construct a model in which, by raising prices, scarcity fosters violence. Guided by our model, we examine this effect in the Mexican cocaine trade. At a monthly frequency, scarcity created by cocaine seizures in Colombia, Mexico's main cocaine supplier, increases violence in Mexico. The effects are larger in municipalities near the United States, with multiple cartels and with strong support for PAN (the incumbent party). Between 2006 and 2009 the decline in cocaine supply from Colombia could account for 10% to 14% of the increase in violence in Mexico.

The right to good governance is a right inalienable to the democratic process. Content analysis was used as the data source for this paper. This study would attempt to resolve the questions on the intricate connection between the right to protest and the right to good governance in Nigeria and what this means for national security and international law. In this essay, it was argued that the international law space is shrinking for holding the democratic process accountable in sovereign states. The significance of the essay is to suggest a new direction for the engagement of international law mechanisms on human rights and for the provision of policy recommendations for good governance and law enforcement.

"This material has been published in Power from Below in Premodern Societies: The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record edited by T. L. Thurston and Manuel Fernández-Götz. [https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009042826]. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © Cambridge University Press"., Spanish singer-songwriter Javier Krahe once described the 20th century as “a total disgust”: “According to those who experienced it, last century was a hell of a traumatic experience.”1 Indeed, the twentieth century was fraught with disturbing experiences where the worst side of human beings showed its ugly head (Hobsbawm, 1994). And yet, this “disgust” of a century has also provided repeated evidence that, even in the most extreme situations, groups of people have somehow managed to articulate their collective agencies, often in the form of resistance, and even generated counterpowers from below (De León, 2015; Moore, 1993; Scott, 1985; Wolf, 1973).

Long-term European experience with the plague and other epidemics has established a set of governance practices to limit the spread of disease, such as quarantine, lock-down of public life and redu...

In an article that appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Kody Cooper argued that “to be a Hobbesian is to be prolife.” In this essay, I will provide an argument that rebuts Cooper’s prolife interpretation of Hobbes. First, I will argue that Cooper has, without argument, committed an equivocation between a person’s personal identity and his or her organism. Resolving this ambiguity would allow for an interpretation of Hobbes that can consistently reject the notion that the life of a person “begins at conception.” Second, I will show that Cooper fails to take into account the significant costs that are placed upon prospective mothers and is therefore not able to judge whether or not aborting a fetus is within a mother’s enlightened self-interest. Third, I will, contrary to Cooper, show why it may be acceptable for a Hobbesian sovereign to construct a legal regime that is permissive of abortion.

In his speech “The European Responsibility,” the Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili summarizes his utopia of a fulfilled humanity by presenting it as an integration of two main traditions: the Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian ones. In contrast, David Dubrovsky launches a new perspective for present and future human evolution: the cyber-superman, i.e. the perfect merging of human mind and digital brain—or the bio-digital interface. “Intelligence” here is not just an artificial by-product of a highly organized technological structure, but the reproduction of mental operations through the techno-replication of the bio-brain as material substrate: the Dubrovskyan avatar. In the present article, I focus on Dubrovsky’s and Mamardashvili’s anthropological paradigms, and their relationship to the phenomena of cyberbeing and cyberculture. I examine the phenomenon of cyberbeing as a “built-in” feature of a bio-electronic, transhuman ontology that impacts and transforms personhood into “cyborghood” in the context of an interactive digital framework of fictional transcendences, body-deconstruction and bio-technological interplays. My aim is to develop a critical approach to Dubrovsky’s cybernetic anthropology and avatar-theory, along with its meaning and implications for our world-epoch, in contrast to Mamardashvili’s ontology, which proves essentially incompatible with the moment of technological singularity—i.e. with the creation of a transhuman bio-digital avatar as envisioned and prophesized by Dubrovsky.

The phenomenon of aggression is the subject of neurophysiology, psychology, sociology and political science. The influence of cultural factors on the occurrence and the level of aggression between groups is raised especially in sociology. In the article – on the example of the analysis of Thomas Hobbes’s philosophical anthropology and his theory of the state (commonwealth) – the deeper level of cultural sources of aggression is considered, namely the impact of ontological assumptions on the model of human functioning and their translation into social and political practice. The original analysis of the influence of Hobbes’s antropology shows that man-mechanism is especially exposed to aggression and depression. Such a diagnosis has consequences in low level of personal safety and in high demand for external security structure. Personal safety is here analysed in three layers: ontic-cultural, psychological-social, and instrumental-defensive.

This essay takes the growing popularity of “hijab/refugee porn” in the West as a point of departure to revisit the historical feminist debate on pornography. While Catharine MacKinnon criticizes pornography as an eroticization of violence and advocates state intervention, Judith Butler warns of the dangers of state censorship, alternatively proposing nonjuridical forms of opposition. Instead of taking up unequivocal positions for or against the state, this essay addresses the political costs of evacuating the state as a site of redress of racial and sexual injustice and examines the risks of state phobia for postcolonial queer--feminist politics.

Hobbes's unusual religious views in his classical work, Leviathan, are often seen as a product of his attempt to reconcile Christianity with his philosophical materialism. Yet given Hobbes'...

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan presented a paradigm of the social contract that has proven foundational in Western political thought. A proper understanding of the philosopher’s thought is thus of para...