Major Works

• Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil [1651]

  - Hackett, 1994 (Edwin Curley, ed.)
  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 Homine

  - Hackett, 1991 (Bernard Gert, ed. -- contains De Cive and selections of De Homine)
  The Elements of Philosophy is composed of three parts, not published in their intended order. De Homine, which was published in 1658, opens with ten chapters on optics. The last five chapters, treating Hobbes’s accounts of the passions and an analysis of… More

• The Elements of Philosophy: De Cive

  - Hackett, 1991 (Bernard Gert, ed. -- contains De Cive and selections of De Homine)
  The Elements of Philosophy is composed of three parts, not published in their intended order. De Cive, published in 1642, was Hobbes’s first definitive articulation of his political philosophy. It includes Hobbes’s account of the state of nature and the… More

• The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic [1640]

  - Oxford University Press, 2008 (Human Nature and de Corpore Politico, J.C.A. Gaskin, ed.)
  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

• Of Liberty and Necessity and Selections from Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance [1654-1656]

  - Cambridge University Press, 1999 (Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, Vere Chappell, ed.)
  This volume presents an exchange between Hobbes and the Anglican cleric John Bramhall.  Hobbes and Bramhall debate questions such as whether human beings can act freely, what freedom means, whether freedom and material determination can coexist, and how… More

Commentary

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

  - Leo Strauss (Elsa M. Sinclair, trans., University of Chicago Press, 1996)
  In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. He argues that Hobbes’s ideas arose not from tradition or science but from his own deep knowledge and experience of human… 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.

• 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

• Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory

  - Gregory S. Kavka (Princeton University Press, 1986)
  From the book description: Both conflict and cooperation are ubiquitous features of human social life. Interests of individuals conflict with those of their neighbors because (among other reasons) material resources are scarce, ideals and values are diverse,… More

• Thomas Hobbes: the Unity of Scientific and Moral Wisdom

  - Gary B. Herbert (University of British Columbia, 1989)
  It is generally believed that Hobbes’s mechanistic physics is at odds with his notorious egoistic psychology, and that the latter cannot support his prescriptive moral theory.  In this book Gary B. Herbert sets forth a new interpretation of Hobbes’s… More

• “Hobbes’s Moral Philosophy” by Richard Tuck

  - Richard Tuck, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Tom Sorell, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 175-207
  Richard Tuck considers the relation between Hobbes’ remarks on moral philosophy, which is concerned with passions and behavior, and his remarks on optics in De Homine, both of which are meant to combat illusions.

• The Hunting of Leviathan: Seventeenth-century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

  - Samuel I. Mintz (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
  Mintz, in examining these seventeenth-century reactions to Hobbes, sets him against his intellectual background and so gives an added dimension to his thought, captures the ideological excitement of the seventeenth-century critics, and reawakens the crucial… 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