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 A classic of its kind. May 6, 2007
Michael J. Brett (London, England)
18 out of 20 found this review helpful
Why is this book important?
Hobbes stands at the end of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages which means that for centuries philosophy, religion and science had been one unified structure under the stewardship of the Church, in a World that stood at the centre of the universe beneath a God in his heaven,who provided and blessed kings and governments.
Suddenly, all these ideas and structures and certainties were in question, or blown apart with gunpowder: Hobbes wrote this during the English Civil War which resulted in the execution of a king by his people, something that would have been unthinkable beforehand.
Hobbes is a modern man, a pioneer, in the sense that he is trying to find what are the bases of knowlege and truth, and power and statecraft-and religion, and-ultimately-what it is to be human, and what sort of institutions would best represent human beings. This book is supposed to be about everything, in one volume! Which shows great self-confidence if nothing else.
It is not an easy read. If you are not familiar with Seventeenth Century English, you may find it hard going. I would recommend you buying the Oxford Very Short Introduction to Hobbes, or something similar, and reading it first, so as to acquire the leading ideas. This might help. It might help at first to dip in, rather than plough through in some kind of tear-stained marathon!
There is something in this book to offend everyone really, notably the chapter on the Pope, referring to him as King of the Fairies.
There is an interesting short biography of Hobbes in Aubrey's 'Brief Lives' which describes him singing every day to keep fit, and travelling with a special walking stick with an ink well fitted in the top, so that he could make notes if an idea struck him when he was out walking. Aubrey knew Hobbes personally.
The idea that power can rest upon distortions of the truth seems to have contemporary resonance, weapons of mass destruction etc.
A classic September 21, 2004
Bob (Scotland.)
19 out of 24 found this review helpful
Don't be fooled by frivellous attacks on this book as boring and outdated. You aren't meant to read all of it for goodness sake.
The chapters on human drives, the laws of nature and the social contract, for example, are as relevant as ever, not to mention Hobbes polemic on Religion.I found that this book contained far more excellent philosophy than I had expected.
What would you do if............? May 18, 2008
Woonwai (Warwick, England)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
What would you do if your government made a law that was completely immoral? It required you to act in an immoral way? This is not just a theoretical question, it has happened - consider Nazi Germany. So what would you do? Follow the law because it is what the law says and as citizens we are under a duty to follow the law? Refuse to follow the law because it is immoral (and risk prison/execution)? What if everybody refused to follow laws they didn't like? Wouldn't that result in anarchy? Would anarchy be so much better or maybe it would be even worse? Maybe if the law was immoral enough you would start a revoltion?
If you think about questions like this, Hobbes' Leviathan is the beginning of the modern consideration of this question. You may not like Hobbes answer (and personally I don't) but after reading Leviathan the reader is in a good position to consider the works of John Locke and S. von Pufendorf who wrote shortly after Hobbes, to a large extent in reply to the questions raised by Leviathan and came up with different answers.
A classic work, but by no means meant for many to read July 31, 2004
11 out of 23 found this review helpful
A few lucid and interesting paragraphs sporadically light up what is otherwise a very dry and antique volume which reads like a modern legal text, but with a lot more 'doths', 'withals', 'giveths', etc in it. Unless you are of some considerable years of age, have great patience, or are specifically interested in this volume, you ought to avoid it - on the other hand, I can hardly think of any other book which is more likely to help cure insomnia.
One of the most important texts. May 29, 2006
I. P. Gearing (Bristol UK)
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
The context of this book, the time of its authorship, should not constrain the modern reader. So you might have to work at it a little. Oh, dear. How sad. Never mind. These are very very important ideas if you want to understand much of the reasoning behind what the west, the Transatlantic Anglo-Saxon alliance in particular, is doing, especially in the Middle East, NOW. You don't have to agree with Hobbes to see what he is getting at and yes the debate has shifted a lot (a wider, if more effete, literacy being a huge difference)but in order to be able to frame the right questions about soverignty in a democracy you have to have the basics. Read in tandem with Rousseau, the Wordsworth edition is far more palitable than this to the modern reader, you get some very interesting perspectives and a great start to framing those important questions.
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