Leviathan — Thomas Hobbes (With an Introduction and Notes by Christopher Brooke)

Jul 6, 2026

Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes with an introduction and notes by Christopher Brooke, examines political authority through enduring controversy since its first publication in 1651. The introduction frames the work as simultaneously tempting and unsettling: it is often read as defending authoritarian monarchy, yet it also denies the conventional divine right of kings and challenges rival foundations. It connects Hobbes’s method and claims—such as sovereignty at a single point and limits on other powers—to later debates in political philosophy and history of political thought, emphasizing why the book remains central to academic syllabi.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages650

Reading Time16 h 41 min

Introduction

Reactions to Leviathan and its interpretive tensions

Hobbes’s life and intellectual context

Thomas Hobbes LEVIATHAN With an Introduction and Notes by CHRISTOPHER BROOKE Contents Introduction A Note on the New Edition LEVIATHAN Epistle Dedicatory The Introduction Part I: Of Man Part II: Of Common-wealth Part III: Of a Christian Common-wealth Part IV: Of the Kingdome of Darknesse A Review, and Conclusion Notes Chronology Further Reading Follow Penguin PENGUIN CLASSICS LEVIATHAN THOMAS HOBBES, the son of a curate, was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in 1588. He studied at Oxford and spent most of his life employed by the aristocratic Cavendish family, whose younger members he accompanied on European tours. He published his translation of Thucydides’ History ofthe Peloponnesian War in 1629, and in the 1630s his interests increasingly concerned themselves with modern science and philosophy. In 1640, in the context of political turmoil in England, Hobbes fled to Paris, where he lived throughout the Civil War. It was here that he began work on his masterpiece, Leviathan. In January 1649, Charles I was executed and England was subsequently declared a Commonwealth; Leviathan was published in 1651, and Hobbes returned home from France several months later. His comprehensive philosophical system was presented in his trilogy, De Corpore (1655), De Homine (1658) and De Cive (1642) . In his eighties, Hobbes wrote an autobiography in Latin verse and translated the whole of Homer ’s Odyssey and Iliad. He died at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, aged ninety-one. CHRISTOPHER BROOKE is a lecturer at Cambridge University in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and author of Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (2012) . Introduction I Ever since its first publication in 1651, Leviathan has provoked strong and mostly critical reactions. It is usually read as an apology for authoritarian monarchy – yet authoritarian monarchists hated it, insofar as it denied the divine right of kings (as this was conventionally understood, at least), and grounded its argument in a set of claims that they viscerally rejected about the natural equality of all. But if Hobbes shared his foundational premises with the radicals, they in turn rejected the arguments he built on that shared foundation that concentrated political authority at a single point – the Sovereign – and rejected almost all limits on that authority. That unsettling ability to get under the skin of both sides of the most significant political arguments reverberates down to the present. From one point of view, Hobbes looks like a modern liberal, with his emphases on self-interest, the plurality of judgements, the consent of the governed, representation, scepticism about the existence of a robust common good, politics organized around the search for a peaceful modus vivendi, perhaps even religious toleration, and a thoroughgoing methodological individualism. And from another point of view, he just doesn’t, with his sharp opposition to the kind of constitutionalism that seeks to divide or limit political power, his subordination of the rights of private property to the requirements of politics, his attacks on the authority of the institutions of what we might call civil society, including the churches, or his insistence that the Sovereign will be in charge of the meaning of language itself. Both in the seventeenth century and much more recently, the suspicion recurs that those who attack Hobbes most stridently may be those who are in certain respects following him most closely. And at least in part in virtue of this ability to provoke – which in turn generates a demand on the provoked to be a bit clearer about just what they themselves think and why they think it – Leviathan remains a permanent fixture on academic syllabi in political philosophy and the history of political thought, just as Hobbes wanted it to be, for as he writes on almost the very last page,‘I think it maybe profitably prin

FAQs

Why has Leviathan attracted strong and mostly critical reactions since 1651?

It is often read as defending authoritarian monarchy, while opponents argue that it denies the divine right of kings and rests on claims about natural equality that critics reject.

How does the introduction describe Leviathan’s relationship to different political viewpoints?

From one angle, Hobbes can resemble a modern liberal due to emphases on self-interest, consent, representation, and individual reasoning; from another angle, he sharply opposes limiting political power and subordinates private-property rights to political requirements.

What role does the concept of sovereignty play in the argument highlighted by the introduction?

The introduction stresses that Hobbes concentrates political authority at a single point—the Sovereign—and rejects almost all limits on that authority, which helps explain why radically minded critics reject his conclusions.

Jul 6, 2026

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