Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Program
Political Science
Advisor
Robyn Marasco
Subject Categories
Political Theory
Keywords
Machiavelli, Hobbes, Democracy, Modernity
Abstract
A review of the democratic scholarship on Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes reveals a tension between institutional and anti-institutional democratic interpretations. This reflects a knot in democracy itself. Miguel Vatter’s labels this knot ‘form and event’ in his democratic interpretation of Machiavelli. Machiavelli’s theory of form and event comes through an exploration of the tensions between structure, agency, rhetoric, and radical openness in the political realm. For Hobbes, the radically egalitarian state of nature produces one first and final event (the social contract) towards a world of strict form. The democratic interpreters have best noticed the tension between form and event in these thinkers, but they remain at the level of dichotomy, often privileging one side over the other. Going beyond a dichotomy towards a generative paradox, we should see form and event as mutually indebted. This democratic dialectic of form and event in Machiavelli and Hobbes reflects the implicit promise of democracy in early modernity. Machiavelli and Hobbes are often paired together, but they are yet to be paired in the democratic scholarship, and thus the democratic interpretations have not fully explored their own relationship to modernity. My project looks to return to Machiavelli and Hobbes to discover the democratic knot of form and event at the beginning of modernity.
Recommended Citation
Garber, Gabriel, "Modernity and the Promise of Democracy: A Democratic Reading of Machiavelli and Hobbes" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6160
