Needed but Unwanted. Thomas Hobbes’s Warnings on the Dangers of Multitude, Populism and Democracy
| Dublin Core | PKP Metadata Items | Metadata for this Document | |
| 1. | Title | Title of document | Needed but Unwanted. Thomas Hobbes’s Warnings on the Dangers of Multitude, Populism and Democracy |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Mikko Jakonen; University of Jyväskylä; Finland |
| 3. | Subject | Discipline(s) | political philosophy, political theory |
| 3. | Subject | Keyword(s) | Thomas Hobbes, democracy, social contract, populism, multitude |
| 3. | Subject | Subject classification | 7207.04 |
| 4. | Description | Abstract |
The purpose of this article is to analyse Hobbes’s understanding of democracy. The first part of the article analyses the role of democracy in the social contract. It aims to show how there exists a democratic element at the beginning of the process of social contract, in which the multitude is transformed into a people. However, after the first social contract is made, Hobbes aims to reduce the power of the people by leading the process of social contract on to another level, on which the power of the people is assigned to a representative of the sovereign power, for example a monarch. The second part of the article aims to explain the practical reasons, provided by Hobbes in different parts of his political theory, for his aversion to a democratic form of government. Main reason for this, it is argued, is that democratic government is closest to the unwanted multitude. Thus, in his political theory Hobbes uses democracy to build sovereign power, but does not trust it as a form of government. |
| 5. | Publisher | Organizing agency, location | Universidad Complutense de Madrid |
| 6. | Contributor | Sponsor(s) | Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä |
| 7. | Date | (YYYY-MM-DD) | 2016-12-20 |
| 8. | Type | Status & genre | Peer-reviewed Article |
| 8. | Type | Type | |
| 9. | Format | File format | PDF, HTML |
| 10. | Identifier | Uniform Resource Identifier | https://lastorresdelucca.org/index.php/ojs/article/view/110 |
| 11. | Source | Title; vol., no. (year) | Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy; Vol 5, No 9 (2016): July-December |
| 12. | Language | English=en | en |
| 13. | Relation | Supp. Files | |
| 14. | Coverage | Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.) | |
| 15. | Rights | Copyright and permissions | Copyright (c) 2016 Mikko Jakonen This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. |