Leviathan
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Students majoring in political science, philosophy, or law who need to study classic original texts of political thought
- General readers interested in the modern origins of the state and social contract theory
- Researchers who need the original English text for citation or conceptual clarification
- Advanced readers who wish to understand the Western tradition of political philosophy systematically
Not a good fit for
- Beginners seeking an easy introduction to political science or preferring popular works
- Readers with limited English reading ability who find seventeenth-century English long sentences difficult
- Readers interested only in story content and lacking patience for theoretical argument
Reading tips
- Read an introduction or an overview of intellectual history first to understand Hobbes's problematic before entering the main text
- Take conceptual notes chapter by chapter, focusing on core terms such as the state of nature, contract, and sovereignty
- Read alongside a Chinese translation; for long sentences, first grasp the argumentative structure, then work through the wording
- Read in stages: first the parts on human nature and the state, then the chapters on religion and law
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher. Publicly available details of his life are limited, and his reputation rests chiefly on his writings. He is known for Leviathan, published in 1651, which begins from human nature and the state of nature and argues that people, to escape universal conflict, surrender rights through a covenant and establish a sovereign, thereby laying the foundation for social contract theory and modern political philosophy. Hobbes's writing is distinguished by systematic rigor and clear argumentation, advancing his views through definitions, reasoning, and counterargument in concise and forceful prose. His ideas have long prompted discussion of state power, individual liberty, and political obligation, and have deeply influenced later political theory.
