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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Leviathan: Body Politic as Visual Strategy in the Work of Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan: Body Politic as Visual Strategy in the Work of Thomas Hobbes

Bredekamp, Horst
Clegg, Elizabeth

Hardcover

PhilosophyArt Criticism & TheoryArt History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 3110681366
ISBN13: 9783110681369
Publisher: de Gruyter
Published: Aug 24 2020
Pages: 293
Weight: 1.70
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.10 Depth: 9.60
Language: English

Horst Bredekamp's subject is the astute deployment and perennial resonance of the startling image of the body politic that dominates the frontispiece to Leviathan: a treatise on the psychology of the individual and the dynamic of the multitude, published in 1651 by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Affirming the centrality of such a figural device for this pioneering theorist of the state, Bredekamp goes on to address the art-historical dimension of the mesmerising etched title-page. In his central chapters he explores the extraordinary range of sources - from socio-cultural tradition to scientific advances - on which the author and his artist-collaborator may have drawn. In conclusion, he reveals Hobbes to be no less passionate than shrewd in his belief that the constraints and amenities of a tolerable life in common attest to the potency of the visual. As appendices, two essays and catalogues explore the portraits made of Hobbes as well as illustrations that appeared in his other works, thus systematically completing the exploration of the images connected with this exceptional philosopher.

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