Thomas Hobbes is widely regarded as one of modern political thought's foundational thinkers. In his book, Nicholas D. Jackson considers Hobbes against the backdrop of the philosophical and political controversies of his day and, in particular, in terms of his arguments with John Bramhall, bishop of Derry and later Armagh.

The contents of the book can be divided into two parts: uninterpreted facts regarding what Bramhall said and did on various occasions, and judgments about the significance of these facts. Jackson's book may be commended for the first. The bishop comes off as “a shrewd surveyor and assessor of property and profitability” in the author's words (p. 34), a politically engaged royalist and theological controversialist steeped in scholasticism. Beyond that, Jackson tells the familiar story about how in 1645 the then–Earl of Newcastle asked his fellow exiles, Bramhall and Hobbes, to discuss the issue of free will. Bramhall, the Arminian, was for it, Hobbes, the Calvinist, against it. After the debate, Bramhall wrote up his views for Newcastle, who then asked Hobbes for his reply. Neither man was to publish his thoughts at that time, in part because the topic was inflammatory. However, Hobbes's contribution, Of Liberty and Necessity, was eventually published in 1654 without, he claimed, his knowledge. Offended, Bramhall replied. More offended, Hobbes replied in Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance. Offended to the highest degree, Bramhall replied in Castigations of Mr Hobbes his last Animadversions in the Case concerning Liberty, and Universal Necessity.

Rather than directly proving that free will exists, Bramhall argues that it is presupposed in the Bible and is a necessary condition for morality. Hobbes argues that the Bible does not presuppose the theory of free will and morality does not require it. To sin is to break a law of God, and that neither says nor entails anything about free will. Hobbes is a “soft” determinist because he thinks that words such as “free” and “voluntary” can be given a straightforward sense and can be correctly attributed to human beings or their actions. Jackson reports many of the beliefs held by each man but does little to analyze their arguments, much less to evaluate them. This brings us to the kind of judgments and interpretations he does offer.

The author's general thesis is that the significance of the debate between Bramhall and Hobbes is that “the whole quarrel” between them was “a by-product or collateral intellectual skirmish of those rebellions and wars in the British Isles” (p. 1). Adherence to free will went with royalism, and adherence to predestination went with the parliamentarians. If Jackson's general thesis were right, then the free will debate would be a philosophical tail wagging a political dog. Further, describing the political activities of Bramhall—and, in Hobbes's case, the relative lack of political activities—does not prove that the debate over free will was a by-product of the British civil wars. The debate is perennial. It goes back to the church fathers, was a central issue during the Reformation, and was a principal point of contention in England between Calvinists and non-Calvinists throughout the seventeenth century. Jackson is not helped by the fact that views about free will and politics are logically independent of each other. Some parliamentarians believed in free will and some royalists did not. If there is a causal relation between free will and one's politics, the direction could go either way.

Jackson is amazed that Hobbes's works in political philosophy are not replete with partisan arguments for or against Charles I and Charles II, or for or against the rebels and the Commonwealth. While his amazement may be due to the fashion of treating Hobbes's works of political philosophy as political actions, Jackson might have considered that they are works of philosophy, not political tracts (cf. p. 273). Hobbes preferred monarchies and moderate episcopal churches, subject to monarchs; but he professed the legitimacy of other forms of government and hated any religious theory that he thought would subvert government, in particular, presbyterianism and episcopacy jure divino.

Jackson exaggerates the consequences of actions. He thinks that since Hobbes disagreed with Bramhall, who held the same view as the king, Hobbes was indirectly insulting the king; and that since he, while in exile, received money from the Cavendishes, he could be considered “the spokesman of the Cavendishes”; conversely, any criticism of Hobbes could be criticism of the Cavendishes. If Hobbes was “a pollutant,” then the Cavendishes were “the chemists of such pollution” (pp. 270–71, Jackson's emphasis).

The author's prose is overheated. He says that Hobbes is “arrogating” something on several occasions when Hobbes is merely presenting his views (e.g., pp. 121 and 229). So sensitive is Jackson to Hobbes's arrogance that he sees “a striking resemblance between the faces of the Leviathan figure and Hobbes” (p. 249). Hobbes's doctrines are subversive, and his “fangs” are dripping with sarcasm on one occasion and bared on another; and he lies “through his teeth” (pp. 204, 217, 226). He is a “chameleon” (pp. 179 and 268; cf. p. 272).

Jackson is verbose. Every abstract, possible interpretation of Hobbes's behavior is mentioned, even though not all the evidence for the plausible ones is given. So it is not enough for Jackson that Hobbes declared that he had nothing to do with the publication of Of Liberty and Necessity and that there is no evidence that he did, and it takes the author four pages to conclude that Hobbes probably did not, but maybe he did (p. 194). This conclusion also illustrates another problem with the book. It is too equivocal. After insisting on the incompatibility of Bramhall's royalism and Hobbes's nonroyalism, near the end Jackson says that Hobbes was “in all likelihood more royalist than not” (p. 273). He also concedes that the “quarrel over the issue of free will” is separable from “the unique political and personal contexts” and part of the “two forces within a broad ‘anglicanism,’” and that Hobbes was right to frame the debate as “an arminian-calvinist one” (pp. 276–77). In short, Jackson seems to retract in the Conclusion what he propounded earlier in the book. As a result, Hobbes, Bramhall and the Politics of Liberty and Necessity offers some useful commentary and contains much of historical interest, yet it comes up very short as an analysis of Hobbes's philosophy, his politics, or the intellectual history of his time.