THE STRUCTURE OF THE CONTRATUALIST ARGUME NT - HOBBES,THOMAS AND THE ETHICAL GENESIS OF MODERN POLITICAL REFLECTION

As its analytical method, the article projects the arguments stated in Leviathan toward the virtual point of maximum consistency which inclu des rendering contradictions explicit). It shows that the Hobbesian co ntractual proposition presupposes a tension between two viewpoints: (1 ) that whose nuclear argument derives from the transcendental construc tion of a universalized subject, which is the condition for the ontolo gical being of reason's idea of itself and (2) that which conceives a sociological-strategic model of empirical simulation. The resolution o vercomes the impasse but preserves the tension of the ambivalence: the ideal-subjective construct is no longer a transcendental deduction bu t instead a moment of anthropological self-constitution of the social actor. The issue shiffts: what is primarily in question in contract th eory are not the social order's conditions of possibility but rather t he duty to political obedience, from a parametric perspective.