Some Reflections on Critical-Text Editing
The Case of Hobbes's Leviathan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2016.663Keywords:
John LockeAbstract
‘Is your edition really necessary?’ is one of those questions which are so searching that they are rarely asked in polite intellectual society. It comes from the best of sources, and it is important not least because it raises fundamental questions—about why editing of a certain sort is necessary and about the criteria according to which it is carried out. Why, indeed, should anyone undertake critical editing? These questions can be addressed in several ways. This article addresses them by way of considering an edition which, it will be seen, is necessary. For Noel Malcolm’s is the first successful attempt to produce a critical-text edition of Leviathan. Here the reader is offered gold rather than base metal, and in considering such work it cannot be out of the way to ask the questions, both particular and general, that arise from reflecting on it. Neither can it be untimely to do so just now, when textual scholars in the West are becoming more conscious of the basic fact that their practices are not the only ones.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2016 Locke Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Locke Studies operates based on a non-exclusive publishing agreement, according to which the journal retains the right of first publication, but authors are free to subsequently publish their work. The copyright of all work rests with the author(s).
By default, all content published in Locke Studies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This license allows authors and readers to share and adapt content for non-commercial purposes, provided that they abide by the following terms:
- Give credit to the original author(s)/creator(s) and attribution parties (i.e., Locke Studies)
- Provide a link to the original source, to the extent practicable;
- Include the copyright notice and/or indicate the corresponding Creative Commons license (and provide a link to the license);
- Indicate what, if any, adaptations were made to the original; and
- Share adapted content under the same license as the original.
Authors are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the various Creative Commons licenses. Readers are advised to consult the licensing information embedded in each published work to ensure that they are familiar with the terms of use that apply.