Third of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading historians.

Quentin Skinner is Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College.

1. Introduction: Hobbes's career in philosophy; 2. Hobbes and the studia humanitatis; 3. Hobbes's changing conception of a civil science; 4. Hobbes on rhetoric and the construction of morality; 5. Hobbes and the purely artificial person of the state; 6. Hobbes on the proper signification of liberty; 7. Hobbes and the classical theory of laughter; 8. History and ideology in the English revolution; 9. The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation; 10. Conquest and consent: Hobbes and the engagement controversy; 11. Hobbes and his disciples in France and England; 12. Hobbes and the politics of the early Royal Society; 13. Hobbes's last word on politics.