Leviathan (Summarized Edition)

A dense, architectonic treatise, Leviathan offers an anatomy of the commonwealth, opening with an account of human psychology-endeavors and aversions, power, passions-within a mechanistic philosophy; from this Hobbes derives the state of nature as 'war of every man against every man' and the rational laws of nature culminating in the social contract and submission to an undivided sovereign, by institution or acquisition. Combining geometrical definitions with polemical eloquence and scriptural ...