Acknowledgements: For comments and criticisms on earlier versions of this paper, I thank Alistair Edwards, Luc Foisneau, Iain Hampsher-Monk, John Meadowcroft, Geraint Parry, Mark Philp, Jonathan Quong, Quentin Skinner, Hillel Steiner, Mark Warren, and my referees. For guidance on particular points, I thank Doug Jesseph, Michael Krom and Noel Malcolm. I thank Richard McCabe, Llewellyn Morgan and Lucy Nicholas for help with translation, and Edwin Curley for help with the Latin Leviathan. Hobbes on Corruption Adrian Blau Lecturer in Governance Politics, University of Manchester Adrian.Blau@manchester.ac.uk This is a pre-proof version of an article forthcoming in History of Political Thought 30:4 (2009). 1. Introduction Thomas Hobbes‟s ideas on corruption have been largely overlooked. My first aim is thus to uncover Hobbes‟s understanding of corruption. Hobbes uses the term over 100 times, and textual analysis shows that he often talks of what I will call „cognitive‟ corruption – the distortion of mental processes, by faulty reasoning or improper attitudes. My second aim is to show the political importance of corruption in Hobbes‟s theory: it can lead to a state of nature. Much Hobbes scholarship discusses how we can escape the state of nature. But for Hobbes it was also vital to know how to avoid returning to it. Corruption is pivotal here. Five related methodological points should be stressed. First, I mainly focus on explicit use of the word „corrupt‟, whereas many scholars justifiably refer to corruption even where an author does not use the term, for example when discussing bribes. Both approaches are valid but may yield different findings. In particular, my conclusions differ markedly from what was until now the only lengthy discussion of Hobbes on corruption, by Peter Euben. 1 1 Peter Euben, „Corruption‟, in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr and Russell Hanson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 220-46.