Hobbes's Leviathan: A Critical Guide

The seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly known as Leviathan, has fascinated, alarmed, and challenged readers ever since its publication in 1651. Both a modernization of natural law theory and an early and influential contribution to social contract theory, Leviathan offers a powerful, systematic theory of the rights and duties of sovereigns and subjects, governors and citizens. This Critical Guide provides scholars, students, and anyone curious about Hobbes's political theory access to the latest research into Hobbes's views of philosophical method, human psychology, morality, law, liberty, governance, power relations, obligation, agency and responsibility, the requisites of social stability, pride, honor, theism, and organized religion. In fourteen original essays by many of today's leading Hobbes scholars, the volume provides overviews and in-depth investigations into those aspects of Hobbes's thinking in Leviathan that are of greatest interest today.