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

• A Letter Concerning Toleration [1689]

  - John Locke (James H. Tully, ed., Hackett, 1983)
  Locke’s plea for religious toleration, first published anonymously in 1689, is the founding document for the modern tradition of religious toleration.  He argues, in contrast to Hobbes, for the strict separation of church and state, basing his argument… 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

• “Hobbes and the Political Science of Power”

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, in Taming the Prince: the Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power (Free Press, 1989), pp. 151-180
  Excerpt: In Machiavelli we find the executive, but not executive power.  Before executive power could be conceived as one of the equal independent powers of a republican constitution, the very concept of power had to be discovered.  This was the work of… More