Book: Leviathan

Overview
Published in 1651, Leviathan sets out a comprehensive account of political order built on a materialist account of human nature and a contractual origin of society. Thomas Hobbes argues that without a powerful central authority people remain in a precarious condition that fosters incessant conflict. The remedy is an artificial "Leviathan," a sovereign created by individuals who cede certain freedoms in exchange for security and civil peace.

Human Nature and the State of Nature
Hobbes describes human beings as driven by appetites, aversions, and a calculated pursuit of self-preservation. Reason functions largely as a tool to rank means to these ends, producing rules of prudence and the "laws of nature" as rational precepts for survival. Because people are roughly equal in their capacity to harm one another and because resources and glory are scarce, the natural condition tends toward mutual distrust and competition.
This leads to the famous portrait of prepolitical life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." In that state there is no justice or injustice, only the unconstrained right each person has to use their power for self-preservation, a situation Hobbes believes inevitably produces insecurity and the constant threat of violent death.

Social Contract and Sovereignty
To escape the dangers of the state of nature, individuals enter into a social contract by mutually transferring their natural rights to a common authority. They authorize an artificial person, the sovereign or "Leviathan", to wield unified power for the preservation of peace and security. This sovereign might be a monarch, an assembly, or some other institutional arrangement, though Hobbes favors monarchy as most likely to ensure decisiveness and unity.
Once established, the sovereign possesses near-absolute authority to make and enforce laws, determine policy, and adjudicate disputes. Hobbes insists that the sovereign cannot be lawfully rebelled against because undermining the authority of the sovereign risks a return to the state of nature; the covenant is among subjects, not between subjects and sovereign, so the sovereign does not partake in the same contractual limitations.

Law, Rights, and Obligation
Hobbes distinguishes between the laws of nature, rational rules discovered by reason prescribing peaceable conduct, and civil laws enacted by the sovereign. Civil laws define justice and injustice within the commonwealth and are binding because they are expressions of the sovereign will. By consenting to the contract, people trade many of their natural liberties for assured security, and obligation to obey follows from the imperative to avoid the chaos of the state of nature.
Although Hobbes acknowledges the enduring impulse of self-preservation, he curtails the moral grounds for resisting lawful authority except in narrow circumstances where the sovereign directly threatens the life of a subject. The framework places great weight on stability and public order as the primary goods of political life.

Religion and the Civil Power
Religious authority, scriptural interpretation, and ecclesiastical power must be subordinated to the civil sovereign to prevent sectarian conflict. Hobbes contends that disputes about doctrine and worship are political problems insofar as they affect public peace, and therefore the sovereign must have decisive authority over religious teaching and practice. This instrumental treatment of religion aims to neutralize competing allegiances that could fracture the commonwealth.

Legacy and Critique
Leviathan laid the groundwork for modern social-contract theory and introduced a powerful realist account of sovereignty and statecraft. It influenced later political philosophers who both adopted and rejected Hobbes's premises, sparking enduring debates about the balance between liberty and security. Critics accuse Hobbes of providing a philosophical defense of authoritarianism and of an overly pessimistic anthropology, while defenders praise the clarity of his diagnosis of political instability and his rigorous argument for institutionalized order.