Hobbes's third jurisprudence: Legal pragmatism and the dualist menace

There is no consensus in the Hobbes scholarship about whether 'Leviathan' is best characterized as a work in natural law or in legal positivism. The literature has shoehorned that work into one or other dominant camps, based on the emphasis they place on passages that correspond to their favored reading. Hence, not long ago, the fashion was to read Hobbes as positivist, while more recently there has been a swing back towards reading him as a natural lawyer. Still, no matter which side one takes, it is not uncommon for scholars to acknowledge that Leviathan was an independent, creative, and singular effort.