Despite its centrality to the social contractarian tradition in political theory, the “state of nature” remains “an elusive concept” (p. i): Should it be understood hypothetically as a purely heuristic device, rather than historically as descriptive of the life of man outside civility, or perhaps a nuanced combination of these interpretations? Ioannis D. Evrigenis defends the latter approach and argues that to understand the development of the “state of nature” is, effectively, to trace Hobbes’s own intellectual development. The invention of the term and its subsequent association with anarchy was famously attributed to Hobbes (although his predecessor Hugo Grotius had already made use of the term), who “composed a different account of the state of nature in each of his several political treatises” and “in ways that confuse, rather than clarify” (p. 2). As Evrigenis shows, however, not only do these “images of anarchy” reveal “a series of turns” in Hobbes’s own thinking (p. 6), but they also constitute a “general rhetorical strategy” (p. 130) in his preoccupation with peace. When taken together, they describe an intellectual trajectory of “a rhetoric of science” and “a science of rhetoric” (p. 22) that is far more consistent and holistic than has generally been recognized.

Divided into four main parts, Images of Anarchy is structured thematically, beginning with Hobbes’s sources from antiquity (Part I) and how they inspired him in developing his political philosophy (Part II), followed by contemporary American and scriptural accounts of the natural condition (Part III) and his science of rhetoric (Part IV). The first part disassociates Hobbes from the tradition of humanism, in which he has frequently been placed, and instead traces his engagement with the works of the ancient Greeks, particularly that of Thucydides (in Chapter 1) and Aristotle (in Chapter 2). Understanding Hobbes as a “A Graecian,” versed in the wisdom of Greek antiquity, rather than rendering him as a Renaissance humanist, allows for a less monolithic and more comprehensive view of his thought. If Thucydides taught Hobbes how to write true and impartial history, then Aristotle showed him the power of persuasion, especially “persuasion for order” (p. 58), and their works contributed most to Hobbes's own political thinking. While his genuinely political treatise would not emerge until years later, when Hobbes was in his early fifties, but the Greeks had already firmly planted the seeds for his embarking on “civil science.”

The second part (Chapters 3–5) engages the “state of nature” chronologically, as it appeared in his writings, in an attempt to reconstruct the intellectual trajectory of the term as Hobbes himself used it in his three major political works. His Elements of Law, structured on the contrast between “reason and passion” (p. 63), conceives of the state of nature as a form of privation of “everything that is beneficial to human society” (p. 68) and as the antithesis of “commodious living.” It was also historically grounded, as the lives of contemporary Amerindians and the ancient Germanic tribes illustrate. But the state of nature, as De Cive makes clear, also acts as a heuristic tool that enables the mind to imagine, almost as a thought experiment, what human relations would look like in the absence of any political authority. Leviathan, his mature and most rhetorical work, not only sharpens the contrast between life outside and inside sovereignty but also continually spurs readers into obedience to authority lest they forget the misery of war.

The third part (Chapters 6–8) delineates historically the development of the state of nature as an analytical device in contrast to its prelapsarian descriptions found in scripture (structurally, it seems more fitting—by way of introducing wider, early-seventeenth-century views—to place the third part at the beginning of the book). The central themes of nature, obedience, and covenant (particularly in Genesis 1–4) seem to have their equivalent in Hobbes’s own political vocabulary. The use of the Amerindian as descriptive of the natural condition is, for Evrigenis, “transparently problematic” (p. 220), for some indigenous tribes did have a form of quasi-sovereign government. The fourth part (Chapter 9) concludes that Hobbes changed his “rhetorical approach” (p. 241) between earlier political treaties and Leviathan.

Among the vast literature on Hobbes, this book stands out in its effort to broaden—rather than limit—our understanding of the state of nature as a core philosophical principle. Its title already suggests that the state of nature can be visualized by way of “images of anarchy” and such “images [serve] as mnemonic devices” (p. 247). Evrigenis rightly insists on the significance of imagery in describing the state of war; after all, Hobbes’s “desire [is] to appeal to as broad an audience as possible” (p. 21) and “images” accomplish that goal. In his account, as Evrigenis argues, the state of nature is “less a literal description” and more a “frame of mind” (p. 254), stirring “a possible, probable, and memorable account” (p. i) of the state of war.

Yet images only represent reality; they do not actualize it. In insisting on a visual representation of anarchy—rather than its inescapable actuality—what can easily get lost is Hobbes’s central message of the immediacy of the state of war, our own proximity to it at any point (even inside the security of the commonwealth), and crucially, the inevitable coexistence of the order inside commonwealths and the anarchy outside them. Evrigenis admirably devotes an entire chapter on the Amerindian as one instantiation of the state of nature—the historical account—which shows how most, though not all, societies may have generally evolved. At the same time, he hardly engages with the way in which the state of nature can be instantiated in the cases of civil war and international relations.

Two of the six or so instantiations—rather than images—of the state of nature (and ones that Hobbes himself considers essential) make only a passing appearance in the book: the English Civil War, which “offered vivid reminders” (p. 244) of the horrors of civil war, and, crucially, the international domain, which, though “itself anarchic,” offers “a certain amount of felicity” (p. 148). The state of nature, for Hobbes, can be instantiated universally (and not merely depicted) as the condition of persons—whether natural or artificial—outside sovereignty, and also more specifically, as in the cases of civil war and international relations. Evrigenis’s choice, however, to focus primarily on the way in which the state of nature is manifested historically in the lives of the Amerindians disregards two central contexts for our understanding of the state of nature as anarchy. As a result, two of his conclusions—the nature of international anarchy and the rhetorical purpose of the state of nature—need to be clarified further.

In the first place, while Evrigenis rightly acknowledges the lasting influence of “Hobbes’s conception and imagery” of international anarchy, which “remains alive and well” today (p. 255), he does not distance himself from Realist misappropriations of Hobbesian anarchy, which generally regard states as existing in the same moral vacuum as individuals in the state of nature. Even though for Hobbes the state of nature is, par excellence, observable in the relations between states, he views the international arena as essentially ameliorative and concerned with progress and improvement rather than any “felicity,” as Evrigenis argues. We do remain in the state of nature, except that artificial persons have now taken the place of natural ones, and it is, definitively, a far cry from the pessimism of the Realists. And in the second place, Evrigenis compellingly emphasizes the rhetorical dimension of Hobbes’s use of the state of nature: Its purpose is to sound the alarm, so that we remain vigilant in the face of a believable threat of an imminent war. But the real message of the term, even more than its force of persuasion, lies in our actual experience of it, here and now, not in the distant past or the depths of the mind.

Images of Anarchy returns us to a much needed contextualization of the ideas that turned the “state of nature” into one of the most powerful—and yet “elusive” (p. i)—concepts in early modern political thought. Evrigenis contributes to our understanding of Hobbes’s rhetorical strategies and provides greater coherence to a thinker whose name has become virtually synonymous with the most established paradigm in international relations today. He describes Hobbes as more consistent than we have generally acknowledged and helps us rescue his name from anachronistic assimilations into “anarchy.”