Leviathan (Penguin Classics)

One of the great masterpieces of 17th century English prose, with a major new introduction

Thomas Hobbes lived through the Thirty Years War and Britain’s civil wars, and the trauma of these events led to his great masterpiece of political thought. How could humankind rescue itself from life in the natural state, which was ‘poor, nasty, brutish and short’? What form of politics would provide the security that he and his contemporaries craved?

Vilified and scorned from the moment it was published, Leviathan was publicly burnt for sedition, but ever since it has exercised a unique fascination upon its readers, both for its ideas and its remarkable prose. Its concepts helped to drag Europe into a new world – one in which we still live today.

About the Author

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher. Born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, he studied at Oxford and spent most of his life employed by the aristocratic Cavendish family. His publications included a translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (1629); a comprehensive philosophical system set out in his trilogy, De Corpore (1655), De Homine (1658), and De Cive (1642); and the major statement of his political theory, Leviathan (1651). He died at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire.’

Christopher Brooke is a lecturer at Cambridge University in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and author of Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (2012).