Guy Fawkes nearly blew up the House of Lords during the opening of Parliament in 1605. Had Fawkes been a Spaniard, he would have been treated as an enemy. But as an Englishman, he was tried as a traitor. This distinction between enemy and traitor has long been a cornerstone of Anglo-American jurisprudence. However, for Thomas Hobbes, the greatest political philosopher of the seventeenth century, there is no distinction: a traitor simply is an enemy. This lecture will explore why Hobbes might have ventured such a dangerous argument and the relevance of Hobbes’s account of treason to our contemporary political discourse, where the line between traitor and enemy is so often being erased. 

Alison McQueen is associate professor of political science and (by courtesy) history at Stanford University. Her research focuses on early modern political theory and the history of international relations thought. She is the author of “Political Realism in Apocalyptic Times,” (Cambridge University Press, 2018), along with a number of articles, book chapters, and public-facing pieces. McQueen is completing a second book, “Absolving God,” on Thomas Hobbes’s strategies of religious argument.

This event is free and open to the public.