When Self-Preservation Bids: Approaching Milton, Hobbes, and Dissent

ABSTRACT

Critics have long used the heuristic device of opposing John Milton and Thomas Hobbes, but this essay explores surprising affinities between the two. After observing that Milton and other Restoration dissenters often agreed with Hobbes on questions of ecclesiastic jurisdiction and toleration nearly as much as they disagreed with what seemed at times like Hobbes' unswerving de facto-ism, the essay shows how Milton and other dissenters found in Hobbes'Leviathan an alluring theory of political obligation that, under certain circumstances, offered much-sought-after rights against the persecuting Restoration state. Emphasizing the epistemological questions brought to the fore by Hobbes' distinct focus on self-preservation, the essay reads Milton's Samson Agonistes as a partial and complicated reception of Hobbes' thought. In adopting, and at the same time rewriting, elements of Leviathan's famous state of nature, Samson Agonistes, it is argued, marks an important moment in the history of political theory and a significant moment for the development of modern popular sovereignty.