Dal riconoscimento al mercato. Antropologia e sociologia del potere in Thomas Hobbes

The object of this contribution is the reconstruction of the profound transformation of Hobbesian anthropology between the works of the 1940s and Leviathan and its effects on the conception of power. This change can be described as a de-psychologization of the pleasure of superiority, a neutralization of the psychological meaning of the superiority of power over other individuals. In Leviathan, the search for superiority is linked not to its ability to provide a good opinion of itself, but to that of achieving an exponential increase in own power through the possibility of asserting (in the most diverse forms) our own will within a social relationship.