Leviathan

What It's About

Leviathan is Thomas Hobbes's account of why organized society and government are necessary. He argues that without a common power to keep people in check, human life would descend into a "state of nature" — a condition of perpetual conflict where life is, in his famous phrase, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To escape this, individuals must collectively agree to a social contract, surrendering certain freedoms to an absolute sovereign authority in exchange for peace and security. Written during the upheaval of the English Civil War, the book is as much a response to political crisis as it is a work of abstract theory.

Key Concepts

Central to the book is Hobbes's bleak view of human nature as fundamentally self-interested and competitive, making conflict the default state of any ungoverned society. From this he builds his theory of the social contract, in which people consent to obey a sovereign in return for protection — a sovereign whose authority, once granted, is not to be divided or challenged, since Hobbes saw any weakening of central power as an invitation back to chaos. The book's title refers to the biblical sea monster, used as a metaphor for the state: a single, awesome artificial "body" made up of all its citizens. This defense of near-absolute authority has made Leviathan both hugely influential and controversial, particularly among later thinkers who favored more limited or divided government.

About the Author

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher best known for his work in political theory, though he also wrote on history, geometry, and ethics. He spent much of his career working as a tutor to aristocratic families, which gave him access to European intellectual circles, and he lived through the instability of the English Civil War, an experience that deeply shaped his political thinking.