Leviathan
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First published in 1651, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is one of the foundational works of modern political philosophy. Written amid the upheavals of the English Civil War, it asks how human beings can escape the insecurity of life without common authority and establish a political order capable of preserving peace. Hobbes begins with a stark account of human nature, arguing that competition, distrust and the desire for power can produce perpetual conflict when no sovereign authority exists to restrain them.
His proposed solution is a social contract through which individuals authorise a sovereign to maintain order and enforce the laws necessary for civil life. Combining political theory with an account of human psychology, religion and the nature of government, Leviathan presents a formidable argument for sovereignty while raising enduring questions about liberty, obedience and political legitimacy. Its image of the state as an artificial person, represented by the imposing frontispiece of a sovereign composed of many individual figures, has become one of the defining images of Western political thought.
From the book
“Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
— Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
On Leviathan
“One of the most influential works in the history of political philosophy.”
— Encyclopaedia Britannica