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WorkThomas Hobbes

Leviathan

Written in English for a country at war with itself, it names the state after a sea monster and hands it the church as well as the sword.

by Thomas Hobbes833 passages held

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First published
(aged 63)
Original language
English

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Overview

A crowned giant rises above a landscape of hills on the engraved title page of the book Thomas Hobbes published in London in 1651. He holds a sword in one hand and a bishop's staff in the other, and his body is made of more than three hundred small human figures. The image, usually attributed to the Parisian printmaker Abraham Bosse, shows the book's central claim. A commonwealth, Hobbes argues, is an artificial person that people make by agreeing with one another to let one man or one assembly act for them all. Where no power stands over them, they are equal enough to kill one another, nobody can count on keeping what he has worked for, and they live at war. The sovereign who ends that war must hold every power undivided, over the church as much as over the army. About half the book concerns religion, and it gives the civil ruler the last word on what Scripture means and what the clergy may teach. One long chapter answers Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the Jesuit who had defended the pope's authority over kings. Hobbes wrote the book in Paris, among royalists who had left England during the civil war. Its closing pages say that a subject owes obedience to any power that is in fact able to protect him, a conqueror included — and England in 1651 was governed by the Parliament and army that had defeated and executed the king. That autumn Hobbes gave the king's son, the future Charles II, a handwritten copy on vellum. Shortly afterwards the exiled court shut him out on suspicion of disloyalty and atheism, and by the end of the year he was back in England. In October 1666 the House of Commons told a committee to collect information on the book. Samuel Pepys, the naval official and diarist, noted in September 1668 that the bishops would not allow it to be reprinted, and that he had paid twenty-four shillings for a second-hand copy that used to cost eight. Hobbes's own Latin version came out in Amsterdam that year, with three dialogues in his defence appended. Later philosophers who traced government to an agreement among free and equal people kept his method and rejected his conclusion; John Locke, in his Second Treatise of Government, argued that life without government was better than subjection to an absolute ruler.

Key concepts

What is the “artificial man” in Leviathan?

The artificial man is the commonwealth itself, which Hobbes describes as a giant human body built by human skill. Sovereignty is its soul, the officials its joints, reward and punishment its nerves, the laws its reason and will. Concord is its health, sedition its sickness and civil war its death. The image carries a claim: a state does not grow by nature but is made, and people are both its material and its makers.

What does Hobbes mean by a “person”?

A person is whoever speaks or acts, whether for himself or in another’s name. Hobbes takes the word from the theatre, where persona meant the actor’s mask. One who acts for another is the actor, and the one on whose authority he acts is the author and owns the deed. A multitude becomes one person when a single man or assembly represents them all, and in a commonwealth that representative is the sovereign.

What is the “liberty of subjects”?

The liberty of subjects is everything a subject may do without injustice under a sovereign. It has two parts. Wherever the law is silent he may act as he thinks best. And some commands bind nobody: to kill or wound himself, to go without food or medicine, to leave an attack unresisted. Hobbes explains the second part by the purpose of submitting, which was to stay alive, so nobody can be taken to have given that up.

How are protection and obedience connected in Leviathan?

Obedience is owed in return for protection and lasts as long as the sovereign is able to give it. Hobbes calls protection the end of obedience, meaning its purpose. When a ruler is beaten and can no longer defend a subject, that subject may seek safety under whoever can, a conqueror included. The Review and Conclusion names the moment: when his means of living lie within the enemy’s garrisons and he consents to submit.

How can a true prophet be recognised, according to Hobbes?

By two marks together: he works miracles, and he teaches no religion other than the one already established. Neither is enough alone, because Scripture itself warns of wonder-workers who lead people astray. A claim to have heard God in a dream proves only that the man dreamed. Since miracles have ceased, Hobbes concludes, nobody need believe a private revelation, and Scripture takes the place of prophets.

What is the “kingdom of darkness”?

The kingdom of darkness is Hobbes’s name for a confederacy of deceivers who spread false doctrine to rule people in this world. He traces the darkness to four sources: misread Scripture, pagan beliefs about demons, Greek philosophy, above all Aristotle’s, and false traditions and invented history. The greatest misreading is that the present church is the kingdom of God, which would give the clergy an authority beside the state’s. Hobbes compares the papacy to a kingdom of fairies.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Life Where No Power Keeps the Peace

What would people do to one another if nothing stood over them? Part One assembles a human being from sense, speech and passion, then takes the ruler away to see what follows.

Hobbes begins with the body: sense, imagination, speech, reckoning with words, the passions. A man’s worth is his price, and what he wants is power enough to keep what he has. Put such people together with no common power and three causes set them fighting: competition, distrust and glory. Nothing is unjust there, because justice needs a law. Fear of death and the wish for a comfortable life incline them to peace, and reason supplies its terms, the laws of nature. To a ‘fool’ who thinks it clever to break his word Hobbes replies that nobody can rely on allies he has cheated.

  • human nature
  • reason
  • language
  • imagination
  • justice
  • natural law

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One Person Made of Many

How can a crowd act with a single will? Leviathan’s new answer is representation: each person authorises one man or one assembly to act in his name, and that representative is the commonwealth.

A person, Hobbes recalls, was first an actor’s mask. Whoever acts for another bears that other’s person, and the one represented is the author of the deed. Applied to the state, every subject is the author of everything the sovereign does, so none can call it an injury to himself. Hobbes’s earlier books had spoken of many wills joined in one. Here the unity lies in the representative alone, and without him there is only a multitude. He names the result a mortal god: it gives a peace nothing else on earth can give, and it can die of civil war.

  • sovereignty
  • political authority
  • political representation
  • civil sovereignty
  • authority

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The Liberty of Subjects

What may a subject still do under a sovereign with no limits, and when does the duty to obey end? Hobbes answers both questions from the purpose of the bargain, which was protection.

Laws are artificial chains, and they hold only through the danger of breaking them. Where they are silent the subject is free to buy and sell, to choose a home and a trade, to bring up children. Some liberties no covenant can remove. Nobody is bound to kill himself, and a soldier who runs away in fear acts dishonourably, not unjustly. Obedience lasts as long as the sovereign can protect. The Review and Conclusion applies this to a lost war: a subject whose livelihood lies within the enemy’s garrisons may submit, and from then on owes the conqueror obedience.

  • political obligation
  • obedience
  • law
  • civil law
  • punishment

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No Second Kingdom Beside the State

Who speaks for God now that prophecy has ceased? Half the book argues from Scripture itself that no church holds power beside the civil ruler, and calls the opposite teaching a kingdom of darkness.

Hobbes reads the Bible as a record of government. The kingdom of God was a civil kingdom over Israel, cast off when the people asked for a king, and it returns on earth only with Christ. Until then no church is that kingdom. Its ministers teach and cannot command, since faith is not to be forced. Someone who says God spoke to him in a dream says only that he dreamed it, so the sovereign must judge prophets and miracles. Against Cardinal Bellarmine, Hobbes denies the pope any authority over kings. The last part asks who profits from the contrary doctrine.

  • biblical interpretation
  • religious authority
  • scriptural interpretation
  • church and state
  • religion
  • prophecy
  • faith
  • salvation
  • political theology
  • religion and politics
  • eschatology
  • revelation
  • resurrection

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Within this work

passages held
833
distinct concepts
820
by passages held, corpus-wide
#78

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “political authority” and “sovereignty”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 23 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
political authoritysovereignty44
political obligationsovereignty40
lawsovereignty18
religious authoritysovereignty18
natural lawsovereignty15
lawpolitical authority13
biblical interpretationlanguage10
biblical interpretationpolitical authority9
lawreligious authority9
biblical interpretationsovereignty8
political authoritypolitical obligation8
political authorityreligious authority8
natural lawpolitical obligation6
natural lawpolitical authority5
biblical interpretationreligious authority4
lawpolitical obligation3
biblical interpretationlaw2
languagepolitical authority2
lawnatural law2
natural lawreligious authority2
biblical interpretationnatural law1
languagereligious authority1
languagesovereignty1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1642 Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (De Cive)

    Written in Latin for readers across Europe, this is the second of Hobbes's three statements of his political theory, after The Elements of Law and before Leviathan, and the one that forms a section of his larger system.

     EN
  2. 1650 The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic

    De Cive and Leviathan both grow out of this treatise, the first statement of Hobbes's political theory, which he wrote in English in 1640 and did not himself send to the press.

     EN
  3. 1651 Leviathan you are here EN
  4. 1655 Elements of Philosophy: Concerning Body (De Corpore)

    This is the opening section of Hobbes's Elements of Philosophy, where he sets out his logic and his theory of motion. He drafted it over ten years or more, and it reached print only in 1655, thirteen years after the section on the citizen.

     EN
  5. 1656 The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance

    This is Hobbes's fullest treatment of free will and his last word on it in his argument with John Bramhall, an argument that reached print in four instalments between 1654 and 1658.

     EN
  6. 1682 An Answer to Bishop Bramhall’s The Catching of the Leviathan, with An Historical Narration Concerning Heresy

    Two defensive pieces from the late 1660s, when Hobbes was barred from publishing on religion: one closes his quarrel with John Bramhall, which had begun over free will, and the other is his history of how heresy came to be punished.

     EN
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