Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651)

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668. Edited by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.

The Leviathan is Hobbes’s masterwork, published in 1651. It contains four parts: “Of Man,” “Of Commonwealth,” “Of a Christian Commonwealth,” and “Of the Kingdom of Darkness.” “Of Man” connects Hobbes’s understanding of… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Corpore

Hobbes, Thomas. Human Nature and De Corpore Politico. Edited by J. C. A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Thomas Hobbes’s De Corpore (Latin for “On the Body”), published in 1655, is the first part of his trilogy on philosophy, which includes De Homine (“On Man”) and De Cive (“On the Citizen”). In De Corpore, Hobbes develops the foundational principles of… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Homine

Hobbes, Thomas. Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive). Edited by Bernard Gert. Translated by Charles T. Wood, T. S. K. Scott-Craig, and Bernard Gert. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991.

Thomas Hobbes’s De Homine (Latin for “On Man”) is part of his larger trilogy on political and natural philosophy, which also includes De Cive (“On the Citizen”) and Leviathan. Written in 1658, De Homine delves into Hobbes’s understanding of human… More

The Elements of Philosophy: De Cive

Hobbes, Thomas. Man and Citizen (De Homine and De Cive). Edited by Bernard Gert. Translated by Charles T. Wood, T. S. K. Scott-Craig, and Bernard Gert. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991.

Thomas Hobbes’s De Cive (Latin for “On the Citizen”), first published in 1642 and later revised in 1647, is a foundational text in his political philosophy. It serves as a precursor to his more famous work, Leviathan, and systematically explores the nature of political… More

The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640)

Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. Edited by J. C. A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

This is Hobbes’s first published philosophical work (1640), which was written in part in response to the conflicts between Charles I and Parliament. The book represents Hobbes’s initial attempt to address political matters with the deductive methods of geometry, and proposes a… More

Behemoth, or the Long Parliament [written 1668, published 1682]

University of Chicago Press, 1990 (Ferdinand Toennies, ed.)

Behemoth is Hobbes’s account of the English Civil Wars of the 1640s.  It is an important book in helping us consider how the experience of the wars influenced Hobbes’s thinking, and how he would later interpret the wars through the perspective of the theories developed in De Cive and… More