Dylan Nickelson’s Research Repository

Dylan is a PhD candidate in the School of International and Political Studies at Deakin University, Australia. He researches historical political philosophy, focusing on seventeenth-century English political philosophy. Dylan's doctorate is entitled Generating that Great Leviathan or Mortall God: How the Idea of Unity Shapes the Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. In it he contends that Hobbes's theory of human nature—the all-too-oft quoted line that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’—is not an integral premise in the argument that absolute monarchy is the best political regime. Rather, what determines Hobbes's conclusion is the merging of a modern political ontology of individuals as political units with the ancient idea that unity is more perfect than division.

Dylan's other research interests include early-modern philosophy, John Stuart Mill's liberalism, analyses of power (particularly Bertrand Russell's social analysis), John Searle's social philosophy, and informal logic or the logic of argument. He is also interested in social science methodology and the interface between descriptive political science and prescriptive political philosophy. The tension between a new political model describing China as a deliberative-authoritarian regime and the normative liberal criticisms of authoritarianism is a case in point.

Contact details
Dylan Nickelson
PhD Candidate
c/o Arts Faculty, Deakin University
WAURN PONDS VIC 3217
Australia
mail@dylannickelson.com