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

• A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England [written 1666, published 1681]

  - University of Chicago Press, 1997 (Joseph Cropsey, ed.)
  Hobbes presents here, in dialogue form, a reflection on the relation between reason and law.  The opinion that emerges from this dialogue manages to maintain Hobbes’s famous insistence on the indivisibility of sovereignty while allowing for a separation of… 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

Other Works

• Translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War [1629]

  - Chicago University Press, 1989 (David Grene, ed.)
  Hobbes published a translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War in 1628, long before publishing his own work on political philosophy.  The translation has long been considered a masterful rendering of the ancient Greek and a work of art in… More

Commentary

• Second Treatise of Government [1689]

  - John Locke (C. B. Macpherson, ed., Hackett, 1980)
  Locke’s Second Treatise, one of the great texts in the history of liberal political thought and a great influence on the American founders, is simultaneously a continuation of Hobbes’ thought and a criticism of Hobbes’ scheme.  Like Hobbes,… More

• 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 Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol [1938]

  - Carl Schmitt (George Schwab and Erna Hilfstein, trans., The University of Chicago Press, 2008)
  One of the most significant political philosophers of the twentieth century, Carl Schmitt is a deeply controversial figure who has been labeled both Nazi sympathizer and modern-day Thomas Hobbes. First published in 1938, The Leviathan in the State Theory of… More

• “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

• On the Sovereign Authorization

  - Clifford Orwin, "On the Sovereign Authorization," Political Theory, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Feb. 1975).
  Excerpt: HOBBES IS, as others have shown, the founder of the modern notion of representation. He does not, however, speak exclusively of “representation,” and “personation” and “standing-for,” but 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

• An Intellectual History of Liberalism

  - Pierre Manent (Rebecca Balinski, trans., Princeton University Press, 1996)
  Highlighting the social tensions that confront the liberal tradition, Pierre Manent draws a portrait of what we, citizens of modern liberal democracies, have become. For Manent, a discussion of liberalism encompasses the foundations of modern society, its… More

• “Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”

  - Alan Ryan, in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Tom Sorell, ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 208-245
  A general essay on Hobbes’ political philosophy that discusses Hobbes’ theory of the sovereign as the source of all law.