Religion as a Means of Political Conformity and Obedience: From Critias to Thomas Hobbes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author should explain why he/she chooses Critias and Hobbes, while there were intermediaries who discussed the same issue, like al-Farabi, Averroes and Maimonides. 

Author Response

Explanations have been added (especially in the Introduction).

Reviewer 2 Report

The complete lack of dates, e.g. Critias (c.460-403 BC or BCE), is alarming.

Cited ref's need an edition and bibliographical data. Remember, you can use idem., or ibid, or op. cit. e.g. R. Parker in fnn 6 and 7

Writers of secondary literature need a few words of introduction, e.g. Frank Furedi.

This essay would have much greater depth if you quoted both Critias' and Hobbes' contemporaries on Critias and Hobbes.

 

There are some ugly turns of phrase: 'A good deal of scholars ... ' p. 2, 2nd para

Redundant <> p. 4, 2nd para.

There is little or no evidence that this writer has re-read his paper.

Author Response

We have addressed more concerns than those spotted by the author. The paper is almost re-written. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper identifies similarities between Critias and Hobbes on the role of religion in creating obedience to the law. It offers an interpretation of Critias' fragment from Sisyphus, exploring the development of religion as humanity left the state of nature. It then turns to a discussion of Hobbes, focusing the relationship between religion and political science. It concludes that both philosophers value religion for the role it plays in creating lawfulness in civil society.

The similarities between Hobbes and Critias is potentially a fruitful area of study, although I found a number of limitations in the author's approach. Most pressing is simply we should identify similarities or common perceptions in the first place, or what gap they fill in the research. The paper never really provides a clear motivation for why this analysis is needed. Indeed, others have observed that Critias' argument may anticipate that of Hobbes. That two philosophers express similar views is not, by itself, noteworthy. There is no argument made that Hobbes is drawing on Critias, or that we gain insight into either through the comparison. The closest the paper comes to doing so is a suggestion on page 7 that Critias offers an example the kind of view of religion that Hobbes is after. Were this explored - that Critias helps to solve some problem in Hobbes - then perhaps that would better motivate the paper. Instead, the introduction just describes their generally shared concerns and broadly similar views, which is not enough to explain the impact of this analysis.

I had a number of concerns about specific points in the Critias interpretation. First, the author might explore that there is some debate regarding the authorship of the Sisyphus fragment, and not all accept that it was written by Critias. Moreover, a number of specific interpretive claims seems unsupported, or at least controversial. For instance, it spends much time discussing the ethic of self-limitation, or the essential role of transcendent afterlife and "otherworldliness" as underlying assumptions or aspects of Critias' argument. But one could offer a more straightforward reading of the fragment, that religion was devised primarily for political control without any need for discussion of hedonism. And religion may be effective with fear of punishment without any appeal to afterlife. The author should do more to support specific aspects of the interpretation, and perhaps engage with other interpretations of the passage. Some reorganization might support this. It could present the Greek text from the bottom of page 4, then offer a more nuanced argument for this interpretation. And the interpretation itself may become part of the real contribution of this paper. 

The Hobbes section provides an overview of some of Hobbes' idea, but again it's not clear whether this is a novel interpretation of any sort, or why we should look for similarities in Hobbes with Critias.

Author Response

Both authors have attempted to address comments made by the reviewer. 

We have added explanations regarding Sisyphus; the section related to Hobbes has been almost re-written. In general terms, the revisions we made are so extensive that to a degree the paper seems to be re-written from scratch. 

Apart from that, we have removed elements that distract the reader from the main focus, including the topic of atheism, which adds nothing to the discussion. In fact, atheism and Critias is a huge topic worthy to be explored in a different paper, dedicated only to this subject. 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The writer needs to ensure my previous comments have been addressed.

Author Response

Changes implemented:

1) We have improved referencing. 

2) We added dates on Critias and Hobbes (see the first sentences of the Introduction)

3) The selection of secondary literature is better justified. See, for example, our first references to Frank Furedi. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This version of the paper is improved in a number of ways. Notably, the discussion of Critias is more precise and better supported by the text. Similarly, the discussion of Hobbes jettisons extraneous material and focuses more on specific claims about religion in civil society. Though I still wonder if either interpretation is novel, or where they fill any gap in the literature. There is no claim that the two philosophers have been misunderstood, or that the interpretations here are important contributions. Rather, the claimed contribution is to put the two “in dialogue with each other.” The nature of this dialogue remains unclear to me. The two views are presented, and in the conclusion it identifies a number of similarities between the two. Yet the nature of these similarities is not really contextualized, nor is it clear what it means for them to share similar concerns given differences in time, value, and political system. It is unclear whether the similarities are deep or superficial, or why it matters that there are similarities between the two. Without doing so, the existence of the paper lacks motivation. As noted previously, others have identified similarities between Critias and Hobbes.

The paper makes a stronger argument for the contribution of this paper in paragraph 2, with claims that these two deserve attention and convergences and divergences will allow us to answer various questions. Doing the latter would make for a proper conclusion. As it is, I’m not sure what these questions are, and focus was almost entirely on convergences rather than divergences. So work needs to be done here and in the conclusion to explain what the paper adds to the literature, if it’s not the interpretations themselves.

The Critias section is much stronger than before and addresses various worries, but I now find the organization quite puzzling. In particular, I find it odd to both include the Greek text in footnotes and to introduce the entire Greek passage into the main text. This now becomes redundant. Also, it’s puzzling to do interpretive work, then provide the passage, then to do more interpretive work. Engagement with any competing interpretations would also be of value.

Author Response

We have made seveeral interventions to imrpove the paper. 

First, the selection of secondary literature is better justified. In the same way, we have added a few words that shed light on our motivation behind this article. We believe that such explanations would work better in the Introduction rather than in the Conclusion. It would be better to alert the reader from the very first step why this study is important. 

Next to that, we brought to the surface the divergences between these two authors. We have split the article in three main sections, making it more familiar with the standards the majority of published papers follow. One section focuses on the differences between these two authors. 

In addition, more emphasis to social contexts has been brought to the surface of our analysis. Also, the Critias' section has been improved: a) the Greek text has been deleted (it does not add anything of real importance); b) we restructured the section, improving the flow. 

Finally, a study that compares Critias and Hobbes has not come to our attention yet. It seems that no study that attempts to bring Critias and Hobbes in dialogue with each other has been yet published. If the reviewer has something to suggest it would be fully welcome. We are willing to take it into account and do some revisions accordingly.