'Feigning the World to be Annihilated': Thomas Hobbes and the Apocalyptic Imaginary

In this paper, I locate Thomas Hobbes’ political thought in the explosion of apocalyptic prophecy in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and particularly during the English Civil War.  I argue that the radical apocalyptic imaginary let loose during the civil war was a central concern in Hobbes’ political thought.  While Christian eschatology had initially been deployed as a legitimating tool by kings and church authorities, the apocalyptic imaginary escaped this effort at sovereign control and was suddenly abroad in the land.  Hobbes responds to this threat not by condemning the apocalyptic imaginary, but by trying to put it back in the service of sovereign power.  He fights apocalypse with apocalypse.  I argue that Hobbes pursues two paths in his project—one that is overtly Christian and another that is seemingly secular.  His theological argument offers a de-radicalized Christian eschatology in which the sovereign is the only authority capable of announcing the apocalypse.  Hobbes’ political argument stages a secular apocalypse, in which the terror and chaos of the state of nature are the preconditions for a kingdom ruled by a mortal God.  In pursuing these two paths, Hobbes does not escape the apocalyptic imaginary, but rather redeploys it and tries to return it safely into sovereign hands.