¹ Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis, trans. Sinclair, E. M. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 55Google Scholar. See also Joshua Mitchell, Not by Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Political Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 57.

² See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 55; Mitchell, Not by Reason, 50; Gross, Daniel M., The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's “Rhetoric” to Modern Brain Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 45, 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tuck, Richard, “The Utopianism of Leviathan,” in “Leviathan” After 350 Years, ed. Sorell, Tom and Foisneau, Luc (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 131Google Scholar; Oakeshott, Michael, Hobbes on Civil Association (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1975), 35–36Google Scholar; Martinich, A. P., The Two Gods of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 49–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slomp, Gabriella, “Hobbes on Glory and Civil Strife,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes's “Leviathan,” ed. Springborg, Patricia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 181, 190, 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gillespie, Michael Allen, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 241–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hampton, Jean characterizes this position as “the passions account of conflict” (Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986], 63–64Google Scholar). For a view that says that glory looms even larger in Elements of Law and De Cive than it does in Leviathan, see McNeilly, F. S., The Anatomy of Leviathan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1968), 146, 163Google Scholar, and Slomp, Gabriella, Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 12; Holmes, Stephen, Passions and Constraint: On the Theory of Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 85–86Google Scholar; and Patapan, Haig, “‘Lord Over the Children of Pride’: The Vaine-Glorious Rhetoric of Hobbes's Leviathan,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33, no. 1 (2000): 78, 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 13; Mitchell, Not by Reason, 11, 48, 50, 57, 59, 63, 70; Pettit, Philip, Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 4, 13, 22, 115, 132Google Scholar; Patapan, “Lord,” 74, 80, 91; and Slomp, “Hobbes,” 196.

⁵ Leo Strauss is one of the few scholars who appreciate Hobbes's investment in modesty. See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 127, and Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 93, 97. While Strauss argues that Hobbes equates reason with modesty, he considers Hobbes's political project thoroughly immodest. See Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 107: Hobbes inaugurates the modern quest for boundless progress, a quest made possible by the belief that man “can extend the limits of his power at will.” Although I am indebted to Strauss for highlighting Hobbes's investment in modesty, I differ on what that investment reveals about Hobbes's views on the possibility, and the desirability, of human mastery.

⁶ By my count, the words “modest” and “modesty” appear in Leviathan six times; the words “humble” and “humility” appear eight times; and “vainglory” and “vainglorious” appear nine times. Thus, if we judge solely by the numbers, Hobbes does not seem significantly more preoccupied with vainglory than he does with modesty and humility.

⁷ See Dietz, Mary G., “Hobbes's Subject as Citizen,” in Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory, ed. Dietz, Mary G. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 91–119Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnston, David, The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Martel, James M., Subverting the Leviathan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Slomp, Thomas Hobbes.

⁸ Dietz, “Hobbes's Subject,” 91–92, 96.

⁹ Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, 11.

¹⁰ Slomp, “Hobbes,” 193.

¹¹ Gillespie, Theological Origins, 42; see also 209, 222, 231, 254; Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 105–7, 168; and Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Sovereignty: God, State, and Self (New York: Basic Books, 2008), xiv–xv, 148, 159–60, 188, 204–5Google Scholar.

¹² Hobbes citations refer to the following editions: Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (hereafter L), ed. Macpherson, C. B. (New York: Penguin, 1985)Google Scholar; Hobbes, Thomas, Man and Citizen (hereafter DH), ed. Gert, Bernard (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998)Google Scholar; Hobbes, Thomas, Human Nature and De Corpore Politico (hereafter E), ed. Gaskin, J. C. A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Hobbes, Thomas, On the Citizen (hereafter DC), ed. Tuck, Richard and Silverthorne, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

¹³ Here, I echo Frost, Samantha, Lessons from a Materialist Thinker: Hobbesian Reflections on Ethics and Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 7, 12, 134–35, 172Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Hobbes's definition of glory shifts from Elements of Law to Leviathan. In Elements, Hobbes defines glory in comparative terms: “GLORY, or internal gloriation or triumph of the mind, is that passion which proceedeth from the imagination or conception of our own power, above the power of him that contendeth with us” (E 50). By contrast, in Leviathan, individuals need not outdo peers in order to experience, and exult in, their power. (Slomp argues that, despite superficial differences, Hobbes's definition of glory remains constant.)

¹⁵ See Elements, 50.

¹⁶ See Walzer, Michael, “Good Aristocrats/Bad Aristocrats: Thomas Hobbes and Early Modern Political Culture,” in The Presence of the Past, ed. Bienvenu, R. T. and Feingold, M. (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 41–53Google Scholar; Thomas, Keith, “The Social Origins of Hobbes's Political Thought,” in Hobbes Studies, ed. Brown, Keith C. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965), 185–236Google Scholar; and Oakeshott, Hobbes, 127–33.

¹⁷ Elements, 50. For the relationship between glory and pride, see Leviathan, Ch. 8.

¹⁸ See Kahn, Victoria, Wayward Contracts: The Crisis of Political Obligation in England, 1640–1674 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), chap. 6Google Scholar; and Hobbes, Elements, 63.

¹⁹ See Elements, 51.

²⁰ Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), 257Google Scholar. See also Pettit, Made with Words, 92–97.

²¹ Wolin, Politics and Vision, 260.

²² See Leviathan, Ch. 13.

²³ Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 19. See also Oakeshott, Hobbes, 92.

²⁴ Strauss, Spinoza's Critique, 97.

²⁵ Dietz, “Hobbes's Subject,” 102.

²⁶ See Kidder, Joel, “Acknowledgment of Equals: Hobbes's Ninth Law of Nature,” The Philosophical Quarterly 33, no. 131 (1983): 133–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ See also Elements, 94.

²⁸ One could object that I place inordinate emphasis on modesty, which is, after all, just one of the laws of nature. But in privileging modesty, I follow Hobbes, De Cive, 62, who contends that the ninth law “encompasses all the other laws within itself.”

²⁹ See Laurence, Anne, “Women, Godliness, and Personal Appearance in Seventeenth-Century England,” Women's History Review 15, no. 1 (2006): 69–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; and Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, Talcott (New York: Routledge, 1992), 169Google Scholar.

³⁰ See van Eijnatten, Joris, “From Modesty to Mediocrity: Regulating Public Dispute, 1670–1840: The Case of Dutch Divines,” Common Knowledge 8, no. 2 (2002): 310–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ See Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, 79–81 and Gerson, Stéphane, “In Praise of Modest Men: Self-Display and Self-Effacement in Nineteenth-Century France,” French History 20, no. 2 (2006): 182–203CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

³² See Curtius, Ernst Robert, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, Willard R. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 83Google Scholar; Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric, 362, 377; and Dunn, Kevin, Pretexts of Authority: The Rhetoric of Authorship in the Renaissance Preface (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

³³ F. Alfonso Rodriguez, A Treatise of Modesty and Silence (1632).

³⁴ See De Cive, 50 and Leviathan, Ch. 15.

³⁵ See Elements, 78; De Cive, 50; Leviathan, Ch. 13; and McNeilly, Anatomy of Leviathan, 140.

³⁶ Hobbes's definition of “humility” appears to shift from Elements to De Cive. In Elements, 51, humility signifies recognition of weakness (“The passion contrary to glory, proceeding from apprehension of our own infirmity, is called HUMILITY by those by whom it is approved; by the rest, DEJECTION and poorness; which conception may be well or ill grounded”), while in De Cive, humility signifies recognition of equality. Yet the association of humility with equality is present elsewhere in Elements, suggesting both that Hobbes's definition remains constant, and that the definition links recognition of weakness to affirmation of equality. See Elements, 100–101: the humble are “contented with equality.”

³⁷ Law eight in De Cive is law nine in Leviathan.

³⁸ Hobbes does not define “humility” in Leviathan. When Hobbes enumerates the laws of nature, in Chapter 15, he defines refusal to affirm equality as “pride,” but he neglects to offer a term that signifies acknowledgment of equality. Humility's absence could suggest that the disposition is incidental to Hobbes's political projects in Leviathan. However, humility does appear in the catalogue of the laws of nature in Chapter 31.

³⁹ See Leviathan, Ch. 6.

⁴⁰ See Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth, or the Long Parliament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 25, 47, 51–52, 53Google Scholar. See also Kraynak, Robert P., “Hobbes's Behemoth and the Argument for Absolutism,” American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (1982): 837–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Holmes, Passions, 96. See also Martinich, Two Gods, 74, 48–50; Oakeshott, Hobbes, 62, 63–64, 130, 161.

⁴² For Hobbes's critique of aristocratic culture, see Dietz, “Hobbes's Subject,” 107; Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 50, 55, 113, 114; and Baumgold, Deborah, Hobbes's Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 122, 124Google Scholar.

⁴³ Augustine, , City of God, trans. Bettenson, Henry (New York: Penguin, 1984), 571Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (1673), Chap. IV, Part V, sections 83, 86.

⁴⁵ Ibid., section 11.

⁴⁶ Ibid., section 86.

⁴⁷ See Allestree, Richard, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1664), 34Google Scholar and Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, sections 3, 5, 87.

⁴⁸ Allestree, Whole Duty, 32.

⁴⁹ See Gross, “Virtues of Passivity in the English Civil War,” in Secret History of Emotion, chap. 3.

⁵⁰ See Hobbes, Behemoth, 47–53 and Collins, Jeffrey R., The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 85Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, section 7.

⁵² Ibid., section 20.

⁵³ Bolton, Robert, Helpes to Humiliation (1630), 11–12Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Baxter, Christian Directory, Chap. IV, Part V, section 35.

⁵⁵ To be clear, I focus on the stories Hobbes tells about the commonwealth's genesis—the rhetorical appeals Hobbes makes to get readers to think differently about obligation. I do not explore the question of how sovereign power is actually acquired in a given commonwealth. Admittedly, Hobbes's account of the commonwealth by acquisition could suggest that Hobbes makes two distinct appeals to readers, one of which undermines the argument that Hobbes values modesty. The individual who acquires sovereignty through violent conquest is presumably immodest—yet Hobbes justifies sovereignty by acquisition. But Hobbes's allowance for a commonwealth by acquisition does not constitute an endorsement of immodesty. While Hobbes retroactively justifies usurpation if the conquered consent to the conqueror's dominion, in the reply to the fool, Hobbes expressly condemns usurpation as an irrational, self-contradictory violation of the laws of nature (L, Ch. 15). Hobbes's commitment to stability yields competing imperatives. On the one hand, Hobbes would discredit, and discourage, glory-seeking rebellion. On the other hand, Hobbes concedes the legitimacy of a commonwealth by acquisition to remove any pretext for disobedience on the part of subjects (many of whom live in states founded upon violent conquest). But given Hobbes's reply to the fool, it is a stretch to say that he admires glory-seeking rebellion. Indeed, Hobbes goes out of his way to remind readers that the legitimacy of a sovereign by acquisition derives not from his feat of conquest, but from the fact that individuals “do authorize all the actions of that Man, or Assembly, that hath their lives and liberty in his power” (L, Ch. 20). Once authorized, the sovereign by acquisition has the same rights, and the same responsibilities, as the sovereign by institution—both are “obliged by the Law of Nature,” which enjoins modesty (L, Ch. 30). Similarly, as the language of authorization suggests, subjects of a sovereign by acquisition view themselves as owners and authors of the sovereign's actions—they adopt the same stance toward sovereign power as subjects in a commonwealth by institution, and cultivate the same political virtues.

⁵⁶ Leviathan, Ch. 13 identifies “Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living” as another passion “that encline[s] men to Peace.” I focus on the peace-inclining potential of “Feare of Death” because, as I explain below, Hobbes betrays ambivalence regarding “commodious living.”

⁵⁷ Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 31Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ The exceptions are Frost, Lessons, 161–65, and Keith Thomas, “Social Origins,” 231.

⁵⁹ Wolin, Politics and Vision, 267, 273.

⁶⁰ See Flathman, Richard, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics (Newberry Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁶¹ This interpretation finds support in De Cive, 148.

⁶² See also Leviathan, Ch. 31: “a signe is not a signe to him that giveth it, but to him to whom it is made; that is, to the spectator.” See also Martel, Subverting the Leviathan, 34, 38, 55.

⁶³ See Leviathan, Ch. 18.

⁶⁴ See De Cive, 23.

⁶⁵ Johnston, Rhetoric, 128–33.

⁶⁶ Here, I follow Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 19.

⁶⁷ See McBride, Keally, “State of Insecurity: The Trial of Job and Secular Political Order,” Perspectives on Politics 6, no. 1 (2008): 11–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁸ See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), chap. 2Google Scholar; Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 118, 121; and Bray, Michael, “Macpherson Restored? Hobbes and the Question of Social Origins,” History of Political Thought 28, no. 1 (2007): 56–90Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ See also Leviathan, Chs. 29, 30, 45; De Cive, 138; De Homine, 66; and Hobbes's Thucydides, ed. Richard Schlatter (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 13.

⁷⁰ For a warning that security can lull subjects into forgetting the sources of legislative authority, see Leviathan, Ch. 26.

⁷¹ See Tuck, “Utopianism,” 138.

⁷² Oakeshott, Hobbes, 163.

⁷³ See also Behemoth, 39–40, 59, 144, 159–60.

⁷⁴ See Wolin, Sheldon, Hobbes and the Epic Tradition of Political Theory (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1970), 23–24Google Scholar; and Mintz, Samuel, “Leviathan as Metaphor,” Hobbes Studies 2 (1989): 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁵ Greenleaf, W. H., “A Note on Hobbes and the Book of Job,” Anales de la Catedra Francisco Suarez 14 (1974): 9–34Google Scholar. See also Coleman, Frank M., “Thomas Hobbes and the Hebraic Bible,” History of Political Thought 25, no. 4 (2004): 642–69Google Scholar; Gillespie, Theological Origins, 248; and Elshtain, Sovereignty, 39–40.

⁷⁶ See Hull, Gordon, “‘Against this Empusa:’ Hobbes's Leviathan and the Book of Job,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 10, no. 1 (2002): 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ Hobbes reserves subjection in God's kingdom by nature for theists. Strictly speaking, atheists are God's enemies, rather than God's subjects, although atheists are still subject to God's power (as are inanimate objects). See Leviathan, Ch. 31: “Whether men will or not, they must be subject alwayes to the Divine Power. By denying the Existence, or Providence of God, men may shake off their Ease, but not their Yoke.”

⁷⁸ Job 42:6. For a contrary view, which sees Hobbes as appealing to human pride and exploiting the temptation to Prometheanism, see Jacobson, Norman, Pride and Solace: The Functions and Limits of Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 53Google Scholar; Shulman, George, “Hobbes, Puritans, and Promethean Politics,” Political Theory 16, no. 3 (1988): 426–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shulman, , “Metaphor and Modernization in the Political Thought of Thomas Hobbes,” Political Theory 17, no. 3 (1989): 392–416CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁹ See Ahrensdorf, Peter J., “The Fear of Death and the Longing for Immortality: Hobbes and Thucydides on Human Nature and the Problem of Anarchy,” American Political Science Review 94, no. 3 (2000), 579–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ On the inevitability of imperfection and disappointment, see Oakeshott, Hobbes, 162; and Silver, Victoria, “A Matter of Interpretation,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 160–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸² See Elshtain, Sovereignty, 160, 170, 204. For debates about the secularization narrative, see Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology, trans. Schwab, George (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985Google Scholar); Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert M. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Toulmin, Stephen, Cosmopolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Gillespie, Theological Origins.

⁸³ Here I differ from Strauss, Philosophy of Hobbes, 28.