SATIRE in LEVIATHAN

Abstract

This essay develops the rhetorical analysis of satire in Leviathan presented by Quentin Skinner in Reason and Rhetoric and the Philosophy of Hobbes . It considers the ways in which the literary features of satire supported Hobbes’s philosophical and political project – not only by ridiculing his opponents, but also by purging the minds of his readership of the dangerous errors and foolish ideas he associated with those opponents. By extending the contextualization of Hobbes’s strategy to include conceptions of satire in Renaissance literary theory and practice, we can see this aspect of Leviathan as a continuation and development of a distinctively humanistic literary practice. This interpretation serves to underline the persisting importance of Skinner’s observation that “[t]he canon of leading treatises in the history of philosophy is at the same time a canon of major literary texts.”