| Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclasiasticall and Civil Revised Edition Contributor(s): Hobbes, Thomas (Author), Berkowitz, Peter (Introduction by) |
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ISBN: 1596980818 ISBN-13: 9781596980815 Publisher: Gateway Editions OUR PRICE: $17.06 Product Type: Paperback Published: February 2009 Annotation: Thomas Hobbes argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Influenced by the English Civil War, Hobbes wrote that chaos or civil war-situations identified with a state of nature and the famous motto Bellum omnium contra omnes ("the war of all against all")-could only be averted by strong central government. He thus denied any right of rebellion toward the social contract, which would be later added by John Locke and conserved by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. (However, Hobbes did discuss the possible dissolution of the State. Since the social contract was made to institute a state that would provide for the "peace and defense" of the people, the contract would become void as soon as the government no longer protected its citizens. By virtue of this fact, man would automatically return to the state of nature until a new contract is made). |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Philosophy | Political - Political Science | History & Theory - General - Philosophy | History & Surveys - General |
| Dewey: 320.1 |
| LCCN: 2009001414 |
| Lexile Measure: 1470 |
| Series: Skeptical Reader |
| Physical Information: 1.69" H x 5.5" W x 8.26" (1.36 lbs) 619 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 17th Century - Religious Orientation - Christian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: To read Hobbes on his own terms is to discover a provocative rival to contemporary perspectives on morals and politics, one that challenges widely shared assumptions about the roots of our rights and calls into question common conclusions about the scope of political authority in a society based on the consent of the governed. At the same time, it is to encounter a complement to contemporary perspectives on the liberal state, one that offers a distinctive and powerful basis for the political order that conforms to reason and secures the conditions under which human beings with differing conceptions of the best life can pursue happiness as they each understand it. |