Author

Thomas Hobbes

Posthumous or imagined likeness of Thomas Hobbes.
Posthumous or imagined likeness of Thomas Hobbes. Source · Public domain

Frequently Cited

“So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death”
Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XI · Reader
“and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short”
Leviathan, Part I, Ch. XIII · Reader
Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

1651 · Renaissance Early Modern · Political Theory

Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil was published in London in 1651, two years after the execution of Charles I, and its famous frontispiece shows a giant crowned sovereign whose body is made of hundreds of tiny subjects, holding a sword and a bishop's crozier above a peaceful town. The Introduction states the governing analogy: as art can make automata with springs for hearts and strings for nerves, so human art creates the commonwealth, an artificial man whose soul is sovereignty.

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