The realist school of international relations is known to draw heavily from the political thought of Thomas Hobbes and Niccolo Machiavelli. While Machiavelli’s contribution to realism is the dichotomy of politics and morality, Hobbes is credited for the relevance of his anarchic state of nature in the international realm. In this essay, I examine the criterion for interpreting Hobbesian political thought, specifically his work Leviathan, as a precursor to classical realism and neorealism. This essay proceeds in four sections. The first section compares the arguments in Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations and Hobbesian political thought with reference to the analogy of the state of nature. The second section emphasizes the ontology of the state in Leviathan and contrasts it with realist claims of the anarchic international system. The last section further differentiates between the positivism of neorealism and the rationalism of Hobbes to argue the incongruence of the Hobbesian state of nature with the international system. I conclude by arguing that both classical realists and neorealists fail to address the theoretical gaps in their appropriation of Hobbes.
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