Let me begin by saying what a good book this is. It offers a comprehensive interpretation of Hobbes's political philosophy that is both clear and carefully argued. It engages with all of the relevant secondary literature in a thoughtful and critical manner. Finally, the book has an ambitious thesis, which I will begin by trying to encapsulate.

The subtitle of Stauffer's book is A Study of the Foundations of Modern Political Philosophy, and the central claim of the book is that Hobbes is the key thinker who laid those foundations. He did so in two different ways: first, he articulated some of the key features of modern liberalism, specifically its emphasis on the right of self-preservation and consequent narrowing of the end or purpose of the commonwealth; second, he inaugurated a thoroughly secular understanding of modern morality and politics. It is the latter point that receives the lion's share of Stauffer's attention in his book. And while many scholars have noted Hobbes's contribution to modern secularism, Stauffer's distinctive claim is that Hobbes's secularism is more radical and revolutionary than most of these scholars appreciate. Indeed, Stauffer claims that Hobbes ultimately aims at nothing less than the total abolition of religion or what he calls “the kingdom of darkness.” “The central claim of this book,” Stauffer writes, “is that Hobbes was offering and trying to promote a new comprehensive outlook—a rational and secular ‘Kingdom of Light’—that would dispel the reigning darkness, chasten religion, and bring a new dawn of enlightenment” (7).

The core of Stauffer's radically secular and atheistic interpretation of Hobbes's philosophy—which of course owes a great deal to Leo Strauss's pathbreaking interpretation of HobbesFootnote ¹—is contained in the three central chapters of the book devoted to Hobbes's understanding and ultimately critique of religion and theology. Of necessity, he pays considerable attention to Hobbes's rather idiosyncratic interpretations of scripture. Like other scholars before him, he brings out that Hobbes's reinterpretation of scripture is designed to bring the Bible into alignment with his political philosophy, especially regarding the supremacy of the civil sovereign. Where he goes beyond previous scholars—with the exception of Strauss and his followers—is in arguing that this political reinterpretation of scripture reflects only the surface of Hobbes's philosophical intention. Hobbes's deeper intention, revealed in the outlandishness of his interpretations of scripture, is to provide a radical critique of biblical religion.

Stauffer supports his radically secular reading of Hobbes's philosophy with careful and often ingenious analyses of Hobbes's highly idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible. Nevertheless, I must confess I am not entirely convinced by his argument that there is a deeper, more atheistic intention beneath the civil theological one that other scholars have noticed. One problem, which Stauffer is aware of, is that there is a tension between Hobbes's intention to provide a civil theology that supports his political philosophy and his putative intention to abolish religion altogether. It seems to me you have to choose one or the other, and I am more persuaded by the interpretation of Hobbes as a hard-nosed civil theologian than as a utopian dreamer of an atheistic society.Footnote ²

Also problematic from my point of view are some of Stauffer's interpretations of Hobbes, which often go well beyond the surface meaning of the text. I will offer a couple of examples. In his famous chapter on religion in Leviathan, Hobbes argues that the natural seeds of religion, above all fear of the unknown, “can never be so abolished out of humane nature, but that new religions may againe be made to spring out of them, by the culture of such men, as for such purpose are in reputation”. This would seem to be a pretty straightforward claim about the ineradicable nature of religion, which may explain why Hobbes ends up spending so much time on it in the second half of Leviathan. But in keeping with his atheistic reading, Stauffer puts special emphasis on “so” and “may” in the passage and suggests that the hold of religion on the human heart may be less emphatically asserted by Hobbes than it at first appears.

A second example of Stauffer's interpretive liberality is his interpretation of the famous “knots” passage toward the end of Leviathan. In this passage, Hobbes argues that the exercise of religious power by popes, bishops, and priests over civil authority has been detrimental to “Christian liberty” and that therefore Independency, in which everyone worships “as he liketh best,” may be the most appropriate arrangement for a commonwealth (chapter 47). In such a case, a commonwealth may be said to be “of no religion at all” (chapter 31). This is a much debated passage, and it is not clear how it fits with Hobbes's more typical defense of uniformity of public worship. Nevertheless, it is hard to see how Stauffer gets out of it that Hobbes may be suggesting the possible fading away of religion altogether in society.

Toward the end of his book, Stauffer concludes that “Hobbes's ultimate aim … was not just to tame and ‘rationalize’ Christianity … but to spread a far-reaching enlightenment … to replace the Kingdom of Darkness with a Kingdom of Light” (272). It is a dramatic image, encapsulating the boldness and provocativeness of Stauffer's interpretation of Hobbes's philosophy. But is it too dramatic in the last analysis, saddling Hobbes with responsibility for secular modernity in its most extreme and spiritually impoverished form? That is the question the book left me with. Put differently, could it be that Hobbes is both less and more interesting than Stauffer's interpretation suggests?