#65: The Biggest Lie About Thomas Hobbes & the Origins of Leviathan | A. P. Martinich

Was Thomas Hobbes the cold, godless materialist he's remembered as — or something far stranger? A. P. Martinich, one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars, joins The Prometheans to make the case that Leviathan is a fundamentally religious book, and that Hobbes's sovereign — the "Mortal God" — is built on the architecture of covenant theology, not secular engineering.

We trace the state of nature, the social contract, and absolute sovereignty back to their theological roots, then bring Hobbes's 17th-century fear of religious civil war into conversation with a strikingly similar anxiety in the Islamic political tradition — the dread of fitna, communal chaos. From there: pandemic-era lockdowns, surveillance and security politics, the anarchy of international relations, and whether a 372-year-old book about the English Civil War has anything left to teach a fractured 21st century.

In this conversation:

About the guest:

A. P. Martinich is the Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Two Gods of Leviathan, Hobbes: A Biography, and Hobbes, and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes.

About The Prometheans:

The Prometheans is a podcast dedicated to interfaith dialogue and the philosophy of religion, hosted by Ali Zaka (AZD), exploring the great questions of mind, meaning, and morality through conversation with leading philosophers and scholars.