Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
Leviathan
The only way out of the war of all against all: a covenant creating an absolute sovereign.
Introduction
Hobbes wrote the book in English while in exile in Paris during the English Civil War and published it in London in 1651; a Latin version followed in 1668. Its four parts deal with human nature, the commonwealth, a Christian commonwealth and the “kingdom of darkness”, his attack on clerical power. Chapter 13 describes life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”. The title comes from a sea monster in the Book of Job. The engraved title page shows a crowned giant whose body is made up of many small human figures, holding a sword and a bishop’s crozier: an image of the sovereign as the artificial person of the people.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Criticizes
- Politicsc. 335 BCE · Aristotle
Taken up in
- Theological-Political Treatise1670 · Baruch de Spinoza
- Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft)1887 · Ferdinand Tönnies
- Political Theology1922 · Carl Schmitt
Criticized in
- Observations upon Experimental Philosophy1666 · Margaret Cavendish
- Two Treatises of Government1689 · John Locke disputed
- The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy1690 · Anne Conway
- Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times1711 · Shaftesbury
- Discourse on Inequality1755 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- The Social Contract1762 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- The Sexual Contract1988 · Carole Pateman
- The Racial Contract1997 · Charles W. Mills
Appears in
- Journey ‘What Is Just?’ · Stop 3 of 10
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made