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 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

• 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… 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’s Critique of Religion and Related Writings

  - Leo Strauss (Gabriel Bartlett and Svetozar Minkov, trans., University of Chicago Press, 2011)
  In The Political Philosophy of Hobbes Strauss argues that the basis for Hobbes’s natural and political science is his interest in “self-knowledge of man as he really is.”  The writings collected in this book, each written prior to that classic… More

• “A Critique of Hobbes’s Critique of Biblical and Natural Religion in Leviathan”

  - Thomas L. Pangle, Jewish Political Studies Review, 4:2 (Fall 1992): 25-57
  Abstract: This essay is a critical exposition of Thomas Hobbes’s atheism, focusing on the natural-scientific and theological foundations of his philosophy.

• “Hobbes on Religion”

  - Patricia Springborg, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Tom Sorell, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 346-380
  A treatment of Hobbes’ views on politics and religion, with particular attention to his distinction between the inner sphere of belief, which lies outside the sovereign’s control, and the outer sphere of public action, which is subject to the… More

• The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West

  - Mark Lilla (Knopf, 2007)
  Lilla argues that, due to a crisis in Western Christendom nearly five hundred years ago, a novel intellectual challenge to political theology arose in Europe. By portraying religion as an expression of human nature, not a divine gift, modern Western thinkers… More

• The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes

  - Jeffrey R. Collins (Oxford University Press, 2008)
  The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes offers a revisionist interpretation of Thomas Hobbes’s evolving response to the English Revolution. It rejects the prevailing understanding of Hobbes as a consistent, if idiosyncratic, royalist, and vindicates the… More

• “Hobbes’ Fearful Wisdom”

  - Michael Gillespie, in The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago University Press, 2009), pp. 207-254
  In this, the seventh chapter of his book-length study of the origins of modernity, Gillespie considers the place of Hobbes in the making (and crisis) of modernity and the Enlightenment.

• “‘Of Religion’ in Hobbes’ Leviathan” by Devin Stauffer

  - Devin Stauffer, The Journal of Politics, v. 72, no. 3 (July, 2010): 868-879
  Abstract: Although Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential works in the early modern critique of traditional Christian political theology, a debate persists over Hobbes’s view of religion. This… More