Hobbes's Theory of Will: Ideological Reasons and Historical Circumstances

Overhoff’s Hobbes’s Theory of the Will: Ideological Reasons and Historical Circumstances is a beautifully written, meticulously researched piece of work. Despite what the subtitle promises, it is not a narrowly construed undertaking but rather a broadly interesting theoretical project. The impetus behind this work is Overhoff’s desire both to give a historically and textually sound exposition of Hobbes’s materialist theory of the will and to account for the way in which Hobbes draws on a peculiar range of philosophical, theological, and scriptural debates in order to make his argument. What is particularly fascinating about this book for a political theorist is the fact that it depicts Hobbes as responding not only to the political ideological crises in his immediate environs, that is, the English Civil War, but also to broader philosophical and theological developments in Europe. That is to say, the bulk of the historical work Overhoff undertakes is philosophical and theoretical in orientation, situating Hobbes’s work in the philosophical and theological debates of his time. ― Political Theory

This book aims, firstly, to provide a detailed account to the formation and evolution of Hobbes’s theory of the will and it certainly succeeds in its main endeavour. A second aim of the book is to bring to light ‘the precise point or force’ of Hobbes’s theory of the will ‘by locating it in its intellectual and political context’, and here again it succeeds. ― Political Studies Review