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Leviathan

Political Philosophy and Theoretical Works

Leviathan is Thomas Hobbes's 1651 work of political philosophy, written in the aftermath of the English Civil War, arguing that without a strong central sovereign authority human life in the state of nature would be, in Hobbes's own words, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and that individuals must surrender certain freedoms to an absolute sovereign in exchange for peace and security through a social contract.

Facts
Year
1651 1
Key Provision
Argues that without a sovereign to keep them in awe, individuals in the state of nature live in a perpetual war of every man against every man; reason therefore dictates that they covenant together to transfer their natural right of self-government to an absolute sovereign, the Leviathan, whose authority cannot lawfully be divided or resisted once granted. 1
Classification
Document Type
Political Philosophy or Theoretical Work 1
Connections

Drafted By

Thomas Hobbes, Political Figures

Hobbes wrote Leviathan during his exile in Paris, publishing it in 1651 after returning to England.

Source Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Influenced

Sovereignty, Political Concepts
Source Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The State, Political Concepts
Source Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In the Other Atlases

Same As

Leviathan

Also in Philosophy Atlas: the same subject.

Sources
1. Thomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Document type, description
    Leviathan is Thomas Hobbes's 1651 work of political philosophy, written in the aftermath of the English Civil War, arguing that without a strong central sovereign authority human life in the state of nature would be, in Hobbes's own words, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and that individuals must surrender certain freedoms to an absolute sovereign in exchange for peace and security through a social contract.
  • Section discussing Leviathan and the state of nature
    solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short
  • Influenced: The State
  • Influenced: Sovereignty
  • Drafted By: Thomas Hobbes, Page text
    Late in his time in France, Hobbes wrote Leviathan , which was published in 1651.
  • In Group: Early Modern Political Works, 1500 to 1800, Page text
    Late in his time in France, Hobbes wrote Leviathan , which was published in 1651.
  • Drafted By: Thomas Hobbes, Section discussing Leviathan
View the Source
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description

The traditional reading takes Leviathan at face value as a defense of absolute, undivided sovereign authority for its own sake, grounded in a psychological account of self-interested individuals fleeing a state of nature. C. B. Macpherson's influential 20th-century reading instead treats Hobbes's individuals as already market-society actors, so that the sovereign's absolute power is less a claim about legitimate authority in general than the logical output of possessive individualism, a proto-liberal argument in absolutist clothing. Other Hobbes scholars reject this as reading 17th-century political theory through 20th-century categories Hobbes did not share, and hold the absolutist claim was meant, and should be read, literally.

A dissenting reading, from C. B. Macpherson's possessive-individualist reading of HobbesThomas Hobbes (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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