Thomas Hobbes e a instrumentalização política de Aristóteles na idade moderna: a teoria do estado hobbesiano em meio a guerra civil inglesa da década de 1640

Abstract

The present research intends, through its objective, "to analyze the instrumentalization of The Politics of Aristotle by Thomas Hobbes", to investigate the instrumentalization devices used by Hobbes, English philosopher from Malmesbury, when writing his political work The Leviathan between the years of 1649 to 1651 (year of publication in England). The interest of this dissertation in the political work of Hobbes is related to the fact that such work was formulated in the face of a context of instabilities that occurred in England between the years 1640 to 1649, known as the English Civil War of the 1640s, and in other terms “The Puritan Revolution”. This historical context also implies the formulation of important political works by the Malmesbury philosopher, to which he refers to The Elements (1640), Of the Citizen (1642) and The Leviathan (1651). As can be seen, Hobbes is a writer who is concerned with the political structure of England, because the traditional political molds, coming from the Christian and scholastic tradition, were in ruins due to the terrible revolution caused in his time. Hobbes' way of receiving Aristotelian writings and circumventing them, through a critical instrumentalization, is a way of trying to solve the political crisis of his beloved England. In short, the studies of this research are guided by the way of political instrumentalization in Hobbes and in this way the historical context of the English philosopher is analyzed to better understand the work of the writer of the seventeenth century.