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.”
Similar Books
Thematic connections across eras and genres — books that talk to each other.
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
Sixteenth-century predecessor in realist political analysis; complements Hobbes's focus on legitimate foundations with its focus on princely conduct
The Social Contract
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1762 successor in contract theory; Rousseau's general will replaces Hobbes's sovereign, producing a radically different conclusion from the same framework
Second Treatise of Government
John Locke
1689 response to Hobbes's absolutism; Locke preserves individual property rights and the right of resistance, producing the liberal alternative
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
1848 text that rejects the contract tradition's individualism in favor of class analysis; Marx's critique of 'bourgeois' political philosophy includes Hobbes
A Theory of Justice
John Rawls
1971 contemporary contract theory; Rawls engages Hobbes as the starting point from which stronger moral conclusions must be derived
Meditations on First Philosophy
René Descartes
1641 contemporaneous philosophical work; Hobbes wrote objections to the Meditations that Descartes responded to in the published edition