Originally I planned to adapt an essay I wrote at university on Hobbes and Leviathan (with comparisons against Locke, Rousseau and others) to serve as a review, but it's rather unwieldy and a few of its less esoteric and elaborate points have been made very well and succinctly in some of the accounts above. Since some reviewers here seem to rate this work unfairly low because of their disagreements, ignoring both the importance of Leviathan and the basic power of the argument Hobbes forwards in it, I'll refer a couple of good, measured reviews with history and backdrop also found here. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Leviathan ranks as a classic Western work on statecraft comparable to Machiavelli's The Prince.
The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668). Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Thomas Hobbes
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