Leviathan (Hobbes book)

Lore & Background

Hobbes asserts that civil war and the 'nasty, brutish and short' state of nature ('the war of all against all') could be avoided only by a strong, undivided government. The title alludes to the Leviathan mentioned in the Book of Job; lexicographers in the early modern period supposed the term was associated with Hebrew words meaning 'to couple, connect or join' and 'a serpent or dragon,' suggesting a unity compacted out of separate individuals.

Reader's Guide

Leviathan is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Its frontispiece, created by Abraham Bosse after lengthy discussion with Hobbes, depicts a giant crowned figure composed of over three hundred persons, clutching a sword and a crosier, beneath a quotation from the Book of Job linking the figure to the monster of the book. The work opens with a complex extended metaphor comparing the state to an artificial man, with sovereignty as an artificial soul. Hobbes espouses nominalism and argues that good and evil are conventional names for individual appetites, and that there is no summum bonum, only a summum malum: the fear of violent death. The treatise remains a foundational text in political philosophy.

Did You Know?

• The frontispiece was created by Parisian Abraham Bosse in the géometrique style.
• The giant figure's torso and arms are composed of over three hundred persons, all facing away from the viewer.
• Hobbes opens with a metaphor comparing the state to an automaton, with the heart as a spring and nerves as strings.
• The verse quoted on the frontispiece is Job 41:24 in the Vulgate, but appears as Job 41:33 in modern English translations.

Historical Context and the Case for Absolute Sovereignty

At its core, Hobbes contends that without a powerful, undivided authority, human life devolves into what he famously characterizes as a war of all against all—a condition so wretched that existence becomes nasty, brutish, and short. The remedy he prescribes is a social contract in which individuals surrender their natural freedoms to an absolute sovereign capable of preventing the collapse into civil war. This argument was not merely academic; it was a direct response to the violence and political fragmentation Hobbes witnessed firsthand, making the book both a philosophical landmark and an urgent political intervention aimed at restoring order through concentrated, indivisible power.

The Name and Its Biblical Architecture

The title Hobbes chose for this treatise was deliberately poetic and provocative, standing in sharp contrast to the plain, descriptive titles typical of early modern political philosophy—compare Locke's Two Treatises of Government or Hobbes's own earlier The Elements of Law. The name draws on the Leviathan of the Book of Job and older mythological traditions. Early modern lexicographers traced the word to Hebrew roots: lavah, meaning to couple, connect, or join, and thannin, understood as a serpent or dragon. The Westminster Assembly's biblical annotations suggested the creature earned its name because its vast body appeared to be a coupling of many parts, or because its scales were tightly compacted. Samuel Mintz argues these etymological resonances map directly onto Hobbes's conception of political power: both the biblical monster and the sovereign are unified wholes assembled from separate individuals, omnipotent, indestructible, incapable of division, inspiring dread, and exercising dominion through the threat of death rather than through mutual agreement.

The Frontispiece as Political Iconography

The famous frontispiece etching was produced by the Parisian engraver Abraham Bosse, working in the géometrique style he himself had refined, after extended discussions with Hobbes. The dominant image is a colossal crowned figure rising from the landscape, gripping a sword in one hand and a crosier in the other, set beneath a quotation from the Book of Job declaring that no power on earth can be compared to him. The torso and arms of this giant are assembled from more than three hundred individual human figures, rendered in the manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, all turned away from the viewer so that only the giant's head bears visible facial features. Below, a triptych frames the title on an ornate curtain, while the left and right panels mirror the sword and crosier—earthly and ecclesiastical authority reflected in castles versus churches, cannons versus excommunication, weapons versus logic. The design thus visually enacts Hobbes's central thesis: the sovereign unites secular and spiritual power into a single body politic.

The Mechanical Commonwealth and the Art of Self-Knowledge

Hobbes opens Leviathan with an extended metaphor that binds together the automaton, the human body, and the state through the lens of mechanism and corpuscularianism. He reasons that if a watch can be called an artificial life because its heart is a spring, its nerves strings, and its joints wheels, then by the same logic the commonwealth is an artificial man of greater stature and strength than any natural one, built for protection and defence. Within this mechanical body, sovereignty functions as an artificial soul imparting life and motion, while magistrates and officers serve as artificial joints. Beyond this architectural metaphor, Hobbes issues a pointed epistemological warning: true wisdom is not acquired by reading books but by reading people. He invokes the ancient injunction to know thyself, arguing that because the thoughts and passions of one person mirror those of another, anyone who examines their own reasoning, hoping, and fearing can thereby come to understand the inner life of every other human being.