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.”
Essay Questions & Food for Thought
12questions designed to challenge assumptions and provoke original thinking. These can't be answered from a summary — you need the actual text.
Hobbes's state of nature is described as 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' Is this a historical claim about actual pre-civil existence, a description of what civil war reduces a society to, or a philosophical thought-experiment? Does the distinction matter for Hobbes's argument?
Hobbes argues that the sovereign cannot commit injustice against subjects because subjects authorize all the sovereign's actions. Evaluate this argument. Is 'authorization' a convincing response to the charge that Hobbes's sovereign is unjustly absolute?
Compare Hobbes's social contract with Locke's (Second Treatise, 1689) and Rousseau's (Social Contract, 1762). How do the three theories differ in who covenants with whom, what rights are alienated, and what powers the sovereign holds?
Hobbes treats religion naturalistically in Chapter 12, explaining it as arising from fear of invisible powers. He simultaneously defends Christian doctrine in Part III. Are these positions compatible?
The 1666 parliamentary investigation of Leviathan for atheism occurred during the Great Plague and Great Fire. What does this historical context reveal about the political function of heresy accusations in early modern England?
The Review and Conclusion argues that subjects owe allegiance to whoever can protect them — effectively legitimating Cromwell's Commonwealth against the Stuart claim. Is this pragmatic position philosophically consistent with the rest of Leviathan, or does it betray the royalism of the earlier parts?
Hobbes's 'Bosse frontispiece' depicts the sovereign's body composed of tiny individuated citizens. Analyze the frontispiece as a visual argument. What philosophical claims does the image make that the prose text elaborates?
C. B. Macpherson argued that Hobbes's theory presupposes a 'possessive individualist' market society. Evaluate this Marxist reading. Is Macpherson's Hobbes historically defensible?
Realist international-relations theory treats the international system as a Hobbesian state of nature. Is this application to states (as opposed to individuals) philosophically justified? What disanalogies complicate the application?
Hobbes's laws of nature include a negatively framed Golden Rule. How does his derivation from self-preservation differ from Kant's derivation of similar rules from moral autonomy?
Hobbes's Part IV polemic against Scholastic 'Aristotelity' is among the most rhetorically energetic prose in Leviathan. What is Hobbes attempting to accomplish polemically, and does the satirical register advance or undermine the philosophical argument?
Hobbes is sometimes said to be the first modern political philosopher. What 'modern' features of Leviathan justify this description, and what is 'pre-modern' about the text that the description obscures?