Hobbes's Body Politics

Robison advances a striking reinterpretation of Hobbes grounded in a fresh reading of his concept of life. Against the standard materialist, mechanistic, individualistic readings of Hobbes, she builds on his description of life as self-instigated, a “motion of limbs that comes from within.” This insight underwrites a new kind of relational account of voluntary motion and a robust conception of agency and power, opening a genuinely original and promising path for rethinking Hobbes’s political theory. – Susanne Sreedhar, Boston University

Meghan Robison is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Montclair State University. Her work focuses on early modern political thought, with particular attention to Thomas Hobbes. She examines how philosophical understandings of living embodiment shape the ways human beings establish relations of authority, obligation, and accountability in political and domestic domains. She has published articles in Scienza & Politica, Arendt Studies, Hypatia, and Hobbes Studies, and has contributed a chapter to The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy (2025).

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