Leviathan or Swim against the Current

Leviathan

Author: Thomas Hobbes

After the publication of his masterpiece of political theory, Leviathan, Or the Matter, and Power of Commonwealth Ecclesiastic and Civil, in 1651, opponents charged Thomas Hobbes with atheism and banned and burned his books. The English Parliament, in a search for scapegoats, even claimed that the theories found in Leviathan were a likely cause of the Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666.

For the modern reader, though, Hobbes is more recognized for his popular belief that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, with life being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Despite frequent challenges by other philosophers, Leviathan's secular theory of absolutism no longer stands out as particularly objectionable. In the description of the organization of states, moreover, we see Hobbes as strikingly current in his use of concepts that we still employ today, including the ideas of natural law, natural rights, and the social contract. Based on this work, one could even argue that Hobbes created English-language philosophy, insofar as Leviathan was the first great philosophical work written in English and one whose impact continues to the present day.

About the Author:
Thomas Hobbes was born on Good Friday in 1588. Despite growing up in an impoverished clerical family, he was precociously intelligent and completed a classical education at Oxford. He decided not to follow in his father's footsteps, though, and instead became a tutor within an aristocratic family. When these royalist political connections and a number of personal writings in support of monarchical authority got Hobbes centrally involved in the turmoil of the English Civil War, he feared for his safety and fled to France in 1640. It was while in exile in France that he wrote Leviathan, the work that cemented Hobbes' philosophical reputation as the pre-eminent modern theorist of secular absolutism.

Table of Contents:

Part 1	Of Man
1	Of Sense	3
2	Of Imagination	4
3	Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations	8
4	Of Speech	12
5	Of Reason and Science	18
6	Of the Interiour Beginnings of Voluntary Motions Commonly Called the Passions; and the Speeches by which They Are Expressed	23
7	Of the Ends or Resolutions of Discourse	30
8	Of the Vertues, Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects	32
9	Of the Severall Subjects of Knowledge	41
10	Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and Worthinesse	43
11	Of the Difference of Manners	49
12	Of Religion	54
13	Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind as Concerning Their Felicity and Misery	63
14	Of the First and Second Naturall Lawes and of Contract	66
15	Of Other Laws of Nature	74
16	Of Persons, Authors, and Things Personated	83
Part 2	Of Common-Wealth
17	Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of a Common-wealth	87
18	Of the Rights of Soveraignes by Institution	90
19	Of Severall Kinds of Common-wealth by Institution; and of Succession to the Soveraign Power	96
20	Of Dominion Parternall and Despoticall	104
21	Of the Liberty of Subjects	110
22	Of Systems Subject, Politicall, and Private	117
23	Of the Publique Ministers of Soveraign Power	126
24	Of the Nutrition, and Procreation of a Common-wealth	130
25	Of Counsell	134
26	Of Civill Lawes	140
27	Of Crimes, Excuses, and Extenuations	154
28	Of Punishments, and Rewards	164
29	Of Those Things that Weaken, or Tend to the Dissolution of a Common-wealth	170
30	Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative	178
31	Of the Kingdome of God by Nature	189

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Swim against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow

Author: Jim Hightower

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