Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes (1651)
“Written in Paris exile during the English Civil War, Hobbes's 1651 masterwork argues that outside a sovereign power, life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short' — and that peace requires an absolute commonwealth in which fearful individuals covenant away their natural right to everything in exchange for protection.”
Characters in Leviathan
by Thomas Hobbes · 1651 · 8 characters analyzed
Cast: Thomas Hobbes, The Sovereign / Leviathan, The Individual in the State of Nature, The Papacy, Aristotle (and Scholastic 'Aristotelity'), Charles I and the English Civil Wars, The Reader / The Subject, King James Bible (Indirectly).
Character Analysis
Writes as a philosopher who has discovered the correct method for political philosophy. Confident but not ornate; commitment to definition-and-deduction produces prose that constantly refers back to its own foundational moves. Simultaneously author, rhetorician, and polemicist; different parts foreground different roles.