Leviathan
1651
- political science
- the state
- early works to 1800
- sciences politiques
- état
- ouvrages avant 1800
- nonfiction
- politics
- philosophy
- politieke filosofie
The story
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, from 1651, is one of the first and most influential arguments towards social contract. Written in the midst of the English Civil War, it concerns the structure of government and society and argues for strong central governance and the rule of an absolute sovereign as the way to avoid civil war and chaos.
What it’s like
Dense, formal seventeenth-century English prose, long periodic sentences built on careful argument, with a dry and deliberate voice that rarely raises its tone. The book's world is printed and bookish: a frontispiece of a giant crowned figure made of countless tiny bodies, chapters that move through reasoning like a slow walk through a cold, carefully ordered study. Its mood is austere and unsentimental, a sober wintry stillness with an undercurrent of anxiety about violence and disorder, the feeling of reading by a single lamp while a civil war rages outside. Pacing is deliberate and methodical, more like a patient lecture than a story, with the emotional register kept cool and analytical throughout. There is no gore or sexual content, and the only darkness is intellectual: grim, blunt passages on the "war of all against all" and the brutishness of life without government. It suits a quiet, focused evening for readers who enjoy philosophy, political theory, or history of ideas, and for anyone curious how early modern thinkers imagined the state.
More books like Leviathan
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Leviathanand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
