Leviathan

‘He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read inhimself, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind.’ Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathanis not just one of the greatest philosophicaltexts in the English language; it is one of the most important works in thehistory of Western political thought. Almost every major tradition in thecenturies after Hobbes – from radical democracy to authoritarianism – hasbeen influenced by its
arguments. Written in exile in a period of dramaticdevelopments – civil war and regicide – Leviathanis in some ways theproduct of its own special circumstances. And yet, at the same time,it deals with fundamental issues that
matter to all of us today: the natureand purpose of the state, the relation between human nature and politics,the idea of natural rights, the justification of authority, the concept ofrepresentation, the nature of sovereignty, the limits of obedience, andthe relationship between religious obligations and human ones. This new edition offers a definitive text drawn from more than twentyyears of research by Noel Malcolm, including, in English translation, allthe most
significant revisions made in Hobbes’s later Latin translation of Leviathan, as well as extensive explanatory notes that elucidate Hobbes’slanguage and identify the many Biblical, classical, and other
allusionsthat are scattered through his text.

Author Biography

Noel Malcolm studied History and English Literature at Peterhouse, Cambridge. He began his career as a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; he was then political columnist and, subsequently, Foreign Editor of the Spectator. In 1999 he was a lecturer at Harvard and gave the Carlyle Lectures at Oxford in 2001. Since 2002 he has been a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and at Cambridge an
Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Trinity, and Gonville and Caius. He was knighted in 2014 for services to scholarship, journalism, and European history.