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Abstract
This article attempts to provide a correction to the exclusive realist interpretations of Thomas Hobbes. It makes the point that Hobbes is not as close to a realist understanding of international relations as it has been prevalently held. Given Hobbes's conception of man and the state of nature, the formation of Leviathan and the law of nature, it is here argued that Hobbes gives us a perception of international relations which is not always conflictual and comprises the adjustments of conflicting interests, leading to the possibility of alliances and cooperation in international relations.
Keywords: Man, the sate, Leviathan, state of nature, law of nature.
1. Introduction
In International Relations (IR), Hobbes's politics has widely been considered to be providing a basis for the realist understanding of international relations1. Although Hobbes himself did not say much about the relations between states, in his words Leviathans or Commonwealths, his name, together with Machiavelli's, is cited almost in all treatments of what has come to be known as 'realism' in the academic IR. One may detect two ways in the use that the theorists of international relations have made of Hobbes's ideas. The first one is that Hobbes's theory of politics supplies a model of international relations. The second one is that international relations do indeed seem to be similar to the relations among individual human beings that Hobbes depicts in the nature, or in the state of nature, which is a state of war. The students of IR have thus made use of Hobbes both in logical and descriptive terms.
As to the logical or model use, it is argued that the model Hobbes provided or the students of IR made of his writings is what has come to be called a realist model. Hobbes is seen as the central figure when it comes to the origins of realist school in IR. Furthermore, it is claimed that there are similarities and continuities between Hobbes's ideas and many realist scholars of IR in the twentieth century such as E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, to name but a few. In a widely read textbook of international politics we have been assured that the 'recent realist thinking derives especially from the political philosophies of...