Leviathan (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
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After the publication of his masterpiece of political theory, Leviathan, Or the Matter, and Power of Commonwealth Ecclesiastic and Civil, in 1651, opponents charged Thomas Hobbes with atheism and banned and burned his books. The English Parliament, in a search for scapegoats, even claimed that the theories found in Leviathan were a likely cause of the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666. For the modern reader, though, Hobbes is more recognized for his popular belief that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, with life being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Despite frequent challenges by other philosophers, Leviathan's secular theory of absolutism no longer stands out as particularly objectionable. In the description of the organization of states, moreover, we see Hobbes as strikingly current in his use of concepts that we still employ today, including the ideas of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract. Based on this work, one could even argue that Hobbes created English-language philosophy, insofar as Leviathan was the first great philosophical work written in English and one whose impact continues to the present day. About the Author: Thomas Hobbes was born on Good Friday in 1588. Despite growing up in an impoverished clerical family, he was precociously intelligent and completed a classical education at Oxford. He decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, though, and instead became a tutor within an aristocratic family. When these royalist political connections and a number of personal writings in support of monarchical authority got Hobbes centrally involved in the turmoil of the English Civil War, he feared for his safety and fled to France in 1640. It was while in exile in France that he wrote Leviathan, the work that cemented Hobbes' philosophical reputation as the pre-eminent modern theorist of secular absolutism.
Part 1Of Man1Of Sense32Of Imagination43Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations84Of Speech125Of Reason and Science186Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by which They Are Expressed237Of the Ends or Resolutions of Discourse308Of the Vertues, Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects329Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge4110Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthinesse4311Of the Difference of Manners4912Of Religion5413Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery6314Of the First and Second Naturall Lawes and of Contract6615Of Other Laws of Nature7416Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated83Part 2Of Common-Wealth17Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth8718Of the Rights of Soveraignes by Institution9019Of Severall Kinds of Common-wealth by Institution; and of Succession to the Soveraign Power9620Of Dominion Parternall and Despoticall10421Of the Liberty of Subjects11022Of Systems Subject, Politicall, and Private11723Of the Publique Ministers of Soveraign Power12624Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a Common-wealth13025Of Counsell13426Of Civill Lawes14027Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations15428Of Punishments, and Rewards16429Of Those Things that Weaken, or Tend to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth17030Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative17831Of the Kingdome of God by Nature189
