Leviathan
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~220,000 words · 1,032 passages
Cite this work
- APAThomas Hobbes. (n.d.). Leviathan. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-hobbes/leviathan
- MLAThomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-hobbes/leviathan.
- ChicagoThomas Hobbes. Leviathan. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thomas-hobbes/leviathan.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Why there must be a State: without a common power to keep us in awe, human life is a war of all against all — and the way out is a covenant by which we surrender our force to a sovereign who guarantees peace.
Context and history
Published in London in 1651, just after the English Civil War had beheaded a king and left the country exhausted. Hobbes had written it in exile in Paris, where he tutored the future Charles II in mathematics. It achieved the rare feat of enraging everyone at once: republicans for its absolutism, royalists for grounding sovereignty in a covenant rather than in God, and the Church for its materialism. It is the book with which modern political philosophy begins: the whole later tradition, from Locke to Rawls, is in large part a reply.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
whereunto, those persons, that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise, take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men, by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs. But there is another saying not of late understood, by which they might learn truly to read one another, if they would take the pains; and that is, Nosce Teipsum, Read Thy Self: which was not meant, as it is now used, to countenance, either the barbarous state of men in power, towards their inferiors; or to encourage men of low degree, to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters; But to teach us, that for the similitude of the thoughts, and Passions of one man, to the thoughts, and Passions of another, whosoever looketh into himselfe, and considereth what he doth, when he does Think, Opine, Reason, Hope, Feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions. I say the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, Desire, Feare, Hope, &c; not the similitude or The Objects of the Passions, which are the things Desired, Feared, Hoped, &c: for these the constitution individuall, and particular education do so vary, and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of mans heart, blotted and confounded as they are, with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible onely to him that searcheth hearts. And though by mens actions wee do discover their designee sometimes; yet to do it without comparing them with our own, and distinguishing all circumstances, by which the case may come to be altered, is to decypher without a key, and be for the most part deceived, by too much trust, or by too much diffidence; as he that reads, is himselfe a good or evill man. But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly, it serves him onely with his acquaintance, which are but few.…