THREE DISCOURSES
A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes
Arlene W. Saxonhouse and Noel B. Reynolds, editors
University of Chicago Press (1995)

"In 1620 in London, a small volume of essays and discourses appeared anonymously. The publisher, a Mr. Edward Blount...published the collection of, as he calls it, 'mixed matter.' Recent wordprint studies on the question of the authorship of this volume now show that Mr. Blount's decision...has provided those of us living more than three and a half centuries later with unprecedented access to the early writings and thought of Thomas Hobbes. The three discourses published here for the first time under Hobbes's name were originally part of Blount's small volume entitled Horae Subsecivae: Observations and Discourses. The entire work consists of twelve essays or 'observations' reminiscent in style and language of Bacon's essays and devoted to such topics as arrogance, expenses, reading history, religion, and death, and four much longer discourses, three of which we have been able to attribute to Hobbes.

Leo Strauss...first suggested that the Horae Subsecivae might be of Hobbesian authorship. During his research at the library at Chatsworth, the country estate in Derbyshire where Hobbes spent most of his life as a tutor and family retainer to the Cavendish family, Strauss came upon an abbreviated manuscript version of ten of the twelve observations included in the Horae Subsecivae....

...This would have been of much interest to a scholar such as Strauss who focused on discovering Hobbes's moral attitude prior to his infatuation with the natural sciences and geometric method....

...Early works written by Hobbes prior to 1620 would present us with special access to his speculations on questions of political philosophy prior to his famed 'discovery of geometry' in a gentleman's library somewhere on the Continent at the age of forty. We would then be in a position to evaluate early influences on his thought and assess the ways in which the political experiences of his time and his exposure to a new methodological approach influenced (or did not influence) his political philosophy. So much of the scholarship on Hobbes has focused on his methodological innovations, on his application of science and the deductive method to the study of politics, that at times the significance of his political philosophy has been lost in this fascination with his method. When the discipline of political science was itself entranced with its own move to a methodology that derived from science in its universal abstraction from particulars, Hobbes became something of a hero...More recently, some scholars have mined the rational-choice potential in Hobbes...while others continue to probe the scientific sources of Hobbes's thought....

...Part III of this volume argues that Hobbes's significance comes not only from his unique methodology, from his attempt to bring deductive, axiomatic reasoning to the study of politics and thereby create 'political science,' but from his exposition of the central principles of modern political thought—in particular, the concern with the principles of political foundation in a world independent of any divine order. This outlook, one in radical opposition to medieval and classical thought, first appears in Machiavelli's work about a century earlier. It reappears forcefully at the core of Hobbes's thought before Euclid and before Mersenne enter his life...." Arlene Saxonhouse and Noel B. Reynolds, editors, Three Discourses (1997 paperback edition), Part One-Hobbes and the Horae Subsecivae, pp. 3–7

BOOK DESCRIPTION
PUBLISHER
For the first time in three centuries, this book brings back into print three texts now confirmed to have been written by the young Thomas Hobbes. The contents of these discourses will lead, at the very least, to a serious reappraisal of the long-standing controversy surrounding Hobbes's early influences and the subsequent development of his thought. The volume begins with the recent history of the discourses, first published as part of the anonymous seventeenth-century work, Horae Subsecivae. Drawing upon both internal evidence and external confirmation afforded by new statistical "word-printing" techniques, the editors present a definitive case for Hobbes's authorship. The discourses provide the strongest evidence to date for the profound influences of Bacon and Machiavelli on the young Hobbes, and they add a new dimension to the much-debated impact of the scientific method on his thought. These texts, "Upon the Beginning of Tacitus," "Of Rome," and "Of Laws," provide direct access to the intellectual concerns and early influences and questions that eventually led Hobbes to the fully formed philosophy of Leviathan. In the discourses, Hobbes addresses the problem of identifying secular sources of political power that might provide security and stability in a world of constant flux, and works to free himself from some of the traditional foundations of political order.

BOOK REVIEWS
LIBRARY JOURNAL, Terry C. Skeats, Bishop's University Library, Lennoxville, Quebec
"The three discourses printed here, together with 12 other pieces, were first published in 1620 under the title Horae Subsecivae (Leisure Hours). Hobbes may have been the author of the discourses, but it was not until Reynolds and Saxonhouse carried out a statistical analysis ('wordprint') of the text that reasonably solid evidence for Hobbes's authorship was demonstrated. The editors do note, however, that the shorter pieces in the Horae Subsecivae were likely written by someone other than Hobbes, possibly William Cavendish, a student of Hobbes's and later second Earl of Devonshire. This volume begins with an essay by the editors on Hobbes and the Horae Subsecivae; the texts of the three discourses ("A Discourse Upon the Beginning of Tacitus," "A Discourse of Rome," and "A Discourse of Laws"), annotated and with modern spellings, follow. Part 3 contains an excellent essay by Saxonhouse on Hobbes's place in modern political thought. Part 4 is a short essay on statistical wordprinting as an analytical tool. This book deserves a place in all libraries supporting programs in the history and philosophy of political thought."

William H. Honan–NEW YORK TIMES
"It has taken 375 years, but Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century English political philosopher, has a new book out."