Hobbes, religion, and rational choice: Hobbes's two leviathans and the fool

Some recent interpreters of Hobbes have deployed techniques of game theory in the service of showing that cooperation in the Hobbesian state of nature is possible. I argue against this strategy in two ways. First, I show that Hobbes did not intend the state of nature as a starting point of the theor y from which the possibility of exit must be explained, but rather as a rhe torically useful depiction of the consequences of wrongful understandings o f men's civil and religious duties. Secondly, I show that the game theoreti c techniques of these interpreters can be used in a new way to demonstrate both the inherent tendency toward civil war in existing Christian states, a nd the superior stability of the Hobbesian political order.