Major Works

• 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… 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… 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… More

Commentary

• The Political Philosophy of Hobbes [1936] by Leo Strauss

  - Strauss, Leo. The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis. Translated by Elsa M. Sinclair. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
  Leo Strauss‘s The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis was originally written in German. The book’s original title is Die politische Philosophie des Hobbes: Ihre Grundlage und ihre Genese, published in 1936. The English… More

• The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation [1957]

  - Howard Warrender (Oxford University Press, 2000)  
  A lengthy consideration of Hobbes’ theory of obligation as it comes to light in his discussion of the state of nature and civil society.

• “On the Basis of Hobbes’ Political Philosophy” [1959]

  - Leo Strauss, in What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 170-196
  Excerpt: In a word, by trying to give reasons for unqualified submission to authority, Hobbes makes impossible unqualified submission to authority; by appealing from authority to reason, as Socrates did, he is forced to repeat what he regarded as Socrates’s… More

• Hobbes on Civil Association [1975]

  - Michael Oakeshott (Liberty Fund, 2000)
  This volume consists of Michael Oakeshott’s four principal essays on Hobbes and on the nature of civil association as civil association pertains to ordered liberty. The essays are “Introduction to Leviathan” (1946); “The Moral Life in the Writings of… More

• “The Non-Normative Nature of Hobbesian Natural Law”

  - Gary Herbert, Hobbesian Studies, 22, no. 1 (2009): 3-28
  Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to defend an older, non-normative approach to Hobbes’s philosophy. I argue, against recent theories that maintain Hobbes’s philosophy contains a normative theory of human behavior “which prescribes proper or… More

• The Platonian Leviathan

  - Leon Harold Craig, The Platonian Leviathan, (University of Toronto Press, 2013)
  From the publisher: Thomas Hobbes’s influential political treatise, Leviathan, was first published in 1651. Many scholars have since credited him with a mechanistic outlook towards human nature that established the basis of modern Western political… More