Alison McQueen

In collaboration with the newly founded „Hermann Cohen Institute for Critical Political Theology“ at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem we offer a public panel debate with two keynote lectures by Prof. Alison McQueen from Stanford University and Prof. Robert Beiner from the University of Toronto. They engage with Thomas Hobbes‘ legacy for today’s theo-political struggles.

Prof. Alison McQueen (Stanford University)

“All the Maddest Divinity”: Religion in Leviathan

Henry Hammond’s outraged description of Leviathan (1651) as “a farrago of all the maddest divinity that ever was read” captured a common reaction: in its treatment of religion, Hobbes’s masterpiece was a very different creature from his earlier works of political philosophy. In Leviathan, Hobbes not only deepened his engagement with religious questions but also advanced strikingly heterodox doctrines—among them mortalism, a materialist account of spirits, and a deflationary view of hell. This talk explores why Hobbes introduced these arguments, tracing where philosophical explanations suffice and where contextual factors offer better insight. Far from being a confused farrago,” Hobbes’s “mad divinity” was a calculated effort to persuade a fractured audience toward civil obedience.

Alison McQueen is an Associate Professor of Political Science and History (by courtesy) at Stanford University.  She is the author of Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times (Cambridge, 2018).  She is finishing a book on Thomas Hobbes and religion and starting a new project on treason in the history of political thought.