Leviathan

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What would you do if............? - Rated
What would you do if your government made a law that was completely immoral? It required you to act in an immoral way? This is not just a theoretical question, it has happened - consider Nazi Germany. So what would you do? Follow the law because it is what the law says and as citizens we are under a duty to follow the law? Refuse to follow the law because it is immoral (and risk prison/execution)? What if everybody refused to follow laws they didn't like? Wouldn't that result in anarchy? Would anarchy be so much better or maybe it would be even worse? Maybe if the law was immoral enough you would start a revoltion?
If you think about questions like this, Hobbes' Leviathan is the beginning of the modern consideration of this question. You may not like Hobbes answer (and personally I don't) but after reading Leviathan the reader is in a good position to consider the works of John Locke and S. von Pufendorf who wrote shortly after Hobbes, to a large extent in reply to the questions raised by Leviathan and came up with different answers.

A classic of its kind. - Rated
Why is this book important?

Hobbes stands at the end of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages which means that for centuries philosophy, religion and science had been one unified structure under the stewardship of the Church, in a World that stood at the centre of the universe beneath a God in his heaven,who provided and blessed kings and governments.

Suddenly, all these ideas and structures and certainties were in question, or blown apart with gunpowder: Hobbes wrote this during the English Civil War which resulted in the execution of a king by his people, something that would have been unthinkable beforehand.

Hobbes is a modern man, a pioneer, in the sense that he is trying to find what are the bases of knowlege and truth, and power and statecraft-and religion, and-ultimately-what it is to be human, and what sort of institutions would best represent human beings. This book is supposed to be about everything, in one volume! Which shows great self-confidence if nothing else.

It is not an easy read. If you are not familiar with Seventeenth Century English, you may find it hard going. I would recommend you buying the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Hobbes, or something similar, and reading it first, so as to acquire the leading ideas. This might help. It might help at first to dip in, rather than plough through in some kind of tear-stained marathon!

There is something in this book to offend everyone really, notably the chapter on the Pope, referring to him as King of the Fairies.

There is an interesting short biography of Hobbes in Aubrey's 'Brief Lives' which describes him singing every day to keep fit, and travelling with a special walking stick with an ink well fitted in the top, so that he could make notes if an idea struck him when he was out walking. Aubrey knew Hobbes personally.

The idea that power can rest upon distortions of the truth seems to have contemporary resonance, weapons of mass destruction etc.

One of the most important texts. - Rated
The context of this book, the time of its authorship, should not constrain the modern reader. So you might have to work at it a little. Oh, dear. How sad. Never mind. These are very very important ideas if you want to understand much of the reasoning behind what the west, the Transatlantic Anglo-Saxon alliance in particular, is doing, especially in the Middle East, NOW. You don't have to agree with Hobbes to see what he is getting at and yes the debate has shifted a lot (a wider, if more effete, literacy being a huge difference)but in order to be able to frame the right questions about soverignty in a democracy you have to have the basics. Read in tandem with Rousseau, the Wordsworth edition is far more palitable than this to the modern reader, you get some very interesting perspectives and a great start to framing those important questions.

Levelling the play field.... - Rated
Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679) was born in England, a country that endured great political turmoil during his life. Having lived through that, Hobbes' main aim was to inquire into the basis of order. The question he asked himself was "What kind of political authority will prevent the return of chaos?". And the answer to that question is in this book, "Leviathan" (1651).

The Levianthan is the personification of total power, an authority without limits, created by men who realise that absolute power given to a powerfull ruler (or to an assembly) is their only way out of the dangers of the state of nature. The name that the author chose for his monarch is quite telling: the Leviathan is a sea monster that appears in the Bible and symbolizes power. This kind of monarch seems like an extreme solution for the problem of anarchy, but it is the only one that Hobbes found. Without the Leviathan, life is 'solitary, nasty, brutish, and short.'

Of course, this book includes many more things than those I have already mentioned. For instance, it explains quite well Hobbes opinion regarding human nature (man is naturally a wolf to men), the state of nature (perpetual war of all against all), the origin of political institutions and the relationship between reason and force (pacts without swords are merely words), among other things.

On the whole, I think this book is a classic of Political Philosophy, and I recommend it as such. Despite that, I think a word of caution is in order, so you will be prepared for what you will find when you tackle "Leviathan". Truth to be told, sometimes Hobbes' prose is too dry, and in some chapters you will need to plod through some rather arid pages. Moreover, this book isn't written in modern English, what makes it more difficult to understand. Those are the reasons why I give this book four stars instead of five...

Notwithstanding that, I believe that "Leviathan" is well-worth the effort of reading it, simply because it has some interesting concepts that you should be aware of, even if you don't agree with them. The only way to discuss in a level play field with someone who has totally different ideas is to understand his arguments thoroughly, even if his position seems thoroughly strange to you. I invite you to do that with Hobbes, reading "Leviathan".

Belen Alcat

A classic - Rated
Don't be fooled by frivellous attacks on this book as boring and outdated. You aren't meant to read all of it for goodness sake.
The chapters on human drives, the laws of nature and the social contract, for example, are as relevant as ever, not to mention Hobbes polemic on Religion.

I found that this book contained far more excellent philosophy than I had expected.