ABSTRACT: “How Hobbesian was Rousseau?  How Rousseauian was Hobbes?” considers the often surprising similarities between the two theorists. Like Rousseau, Hobbes was committed to a high degree of equality among citizens, and even to democracy as the foundation of a legitimate civil society.  And like Hobbes, Rousseau believed that civil laws constitute the morality of the citizens.  How did Rousseau read Hobbes, and how far are the resemblances between them the product of his reading? 

BIO: Richard Tuck is the Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has been since 1995.  Prior to that he had been a University Lecturer in History at Cambridge since 1973 and a Fellow of Jesus College since 1970; he is still an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College.  He is the author of many articles and books on political thought and its history, including "Natural Rights Theories" (Cambridge University Press 1979), "Hobbes"  (Oxford University Press 1989), "Philosophy and Government 1572-1651" (Cambridge University Press 1993), "The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant" (Oxford University Press 1999),  "Free Riding" (Harvard University Press 2008) and "The Sleeping Sovereign" (Cambridge University Press 2016).  He has also produced editions of Hobbes’s "Leviathan" (Cambridge University Press 1991), Hobbes’s "The Citizen" (with Michael Silverthorne) (Cambridge University Press 1998) and Hugo Grotius’s "The Rights of War and Peace" (Liberty Fund, Indianapolis 2005).  He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.