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 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

Commentary

• Community and Civil Society [1887]

  - Ferdinand Toennies (Margaret Hollis, trans., Jose Harris, ed., Cambridge, 2001)
  Tönnies’ Community and Civil Society (first published in 1887 as Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) is a classic of social and political theory, exploring the tension between close-knit “communities” and an emerging global market… More

• “Thomas Hobbes’ Dialectic of Desire”

  - Gary Herbert, The New Scholasticism, v. 50,  no. 2 (1976): 137-163
  From the conclusion of the paper: “The central claim of the present paper has been that Hobbes’ philosophy proceeds by virtue of a dynamic, dialectical conception of nature, a conception which, I believe has its own origins in his thoughts about… More

• “Fear of Death” by Gary Herbert

  - Gary Herbert, Hobbes Studies, 7, no. 1 (1994): 56-68
  Excerpt: Of all the passions of self-interest, fear, Hobbes believed, was the most irresistible, most reliable, and most able to enlighten man regarding the truth of his situation. Unlike desire or appetite, fear is not limited by ignorance. While one can… More

• “Hobbes’s Psychology”

  - Bernard Gert, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Tom Sorell, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 157-174
  An investigation of Hobbes’ determinism and the interaction of reason and passion in Hobbes’ moral philosophy.  The author denies that Hobbes was simply a psychological egoist.

• Made with Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics

  - Phillip Pettit (Princeton University Press, 2009)
  Pettit argues that it was Hobbes, not later thinkers like Rousseau, who invented the invention of language thesis–the idea that language is a cultural innovation that transformed the human mind. The invention, in Hobbes’s story, is a double-edged… More