Preface

The present volume originates in the 2003 international issue of Filozofski vestnik, the journal of the Institute of Philosophy in the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. Contributions have been revised for the present edition and a substantive introduction has been added. I want to thank Matjaž Vesel, Managing Editor of Filozofski Vestnik, and Peter Klepec, Editor-in-Chief of Filozofski Vestnik, for giving me permission to reprint material from the Behemoth issue of Filozofski vestnik. I also want to thank Rado Riha, Head of the Institute of Philosophy, for his understanding and support of this project.

I thank John Dunn, Stephen Holmes, István Hont, Noel Malcolm, and Richard Tuck for their encouragement and advice at the beginning of this project. I prepared the Behemoth issue of Filozofski vestnik while a Visiting Research Fellow at the Remarque Institute of New York University. I am thankful to its Director, Tony Judt, and Jair Kessler, the Assistant Director, for their hospitality.

I prepared the present volume at the University of California, Irvine, where I am a visiting researcher. My special thanks are due to Bill Maurer, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, and David Goldberg, Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, who provided me with an institutional home and workspace in California.

I am grateful to my wife, Julia Elyachar, for her support through the various incarnations of this project, to my son Elijan for the behemoths and leviathans he drew for the book, and to my son Martin for his hummingbirds.

Ruth Turner has read, commented on, and edited portions of the manuscript. I am deeply grateful for her work. I would like to acknowledge the crucial role Gabriella Slomp played in the process of turning the original journal issue into a book. I would also like to thank Paolo Cristofolini and Rina Nicastro for kindly sending me a copy of Onofrio Nicastro’s Note sul Behemoth di Thomas Hobbes, and Paul Seaward for allowing me to read the manuscript of his critical edition of Behemoth for the Clarendon edition of Hobbes.

Note on Citation

Throughout this volume, the following abbreviations are used:

EW

The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 11 vols (London: John Bohn, 1839-45).

OL

Opera Philosophica quae latine scripsit omnia, ed. Sir William Molesworth, 5 vols (London: John Bohn, 1839-45).