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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The Political Works of Thomas Hobbes, compiled into a single authoritative edition, delves into the foundational texts that shaped modern political philosophy. This compilation includes seminal works such as "Leviathan," where Hobbes presents his views on human nature, the social contract, and absolute sovereignty, characterized by his distinctively stark and rigorous prose. Hobbes writes with an unwavering clarity, employing a methodical structure that aims to dismantle the chaotic assumptions of human nature and propose a new political order grounded in rational self-interest. His ideas resonate within the broader context of the tumultuous 17th-century political landscape, reflecting concerns over civil war and authority that still echo in contemporary discussions of governance and society. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), a contemporary of both the English Civil War and the scientific revolution, faced profound uncertainties that undoubtedly influenced his philosophical inquiries. His experiences of conflict led him to advocate for strong centralized authority as a means of ensuring peace and stability. A student of mathematics and natural philosophy, Hobbes's interdisciplinary approach sought to ground political theory in the principles of science and reason, making his insights both radical and transformative for his time. This edition of The Political Works of Thomas Hobbes is essential for any reader interested in political theory, philosophy, or the history of ideas. It invites contemporary scholars and general readers alike to engage with Hobbes's arguments about human nature, the justification of political power, and the implications for individual freedoms. As we navigate today's complex political landscape, Hobbes's insights remain as relevant as ever, challenging us to reckon with the balance between authority and liberty. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Political Works of Thomas Hobbes (4 Books in One Edition)
Table of Contents
Introduction
This volume brings together four major political writings by Thomas Hobbes, presenting a coherent arc from foundational analysis to sweeping system and historical diagnosis. The Elements of Law, De Cive (On the Citizen), Leviathan, and Behemoth, or The Long Parliament appear here as a single-author collection devoted to Hobbes’s political thought. The purpose is not to gather every work he wrote, but to assemble the central texts through which he shaped modern political philosophy. Read together, they show the evolution and consistency of his arguments about human nature, civil order, sovereignty, and the conditions required for durable peace in a turbulent age.
The collection spans complementary genres within political philosophy. The Elements of Law and De Cive are philosophical treatises, designed to establish first principles of human conduct and civic life. Leviathan is a comprehensive work of political theory that integrates moral psychology, jurisprudence, and theology into a single system. Behemoth is cast as a dialogue that offers a historical and analytical narrative of England’s mid-seventeenth-century conflicts. The result is a blend of systematic exposition and applied reflection: tightly argued demonstrations of principles paired with an extended case study of political breakdown, deliberation, and the consequences of institutional failure.
These works were written amid the upheavals of seventeenth-century England, a period marked by civil war, regime change, and fierce public disputes over authority and religious allegiance. Hobbes addresses the perennial problem of how political order can be founded and sustained when loyalties fracture and interpretations of obligation diverge. He treats politics as a science grounded in a careful account of human motives and capacities, while responding to urgent contemporary controversies. The historical pressures that surrounded their composition gave Hobbes’s arguments a distinctive clarity and urgency, but the issues he confronts—stability, legitimacy, and security—reach well beyond their immediate context.
The Elements of Law, composed on the eve of civil conflict, outlines a path from an analysis of human passions and reasoning to the construction of civil society. It presents a unified approach in which psychology informs ethics and politics, aiming to show why individuals have reason to submit to common rules and a public power. Initially circulated in manuscript and later published in parts, it exhibits Hobbes’s early commitment to deriving political conclusions from basic definitions and logically connected steps. Readers will recognize here the germ of themes that Hobbes refines and extends in his subsequent political writings.
De Cive, first published in Latin and later in English, concentrates on the nature of citizenship, sovereignty, and law. Its focus is the civic conditions of peace: how obligation arises, how rights are defined, and why disputes over conscience and religion can destabilize the commonwealth. Hobbes articulates a civil doctrine that places public authority at the center of lawful order, while also clarifying the terms of consent and the bounds of individual liberty within a common framework. De Cive distills and sharpens positions tentatively set out earlier, offering a compact statement of the principles that would inform Leviathan.
Leviathan, published in 1651, is Hobbes’s most expansive political work, an ambitious system that integrates a theory of human nature, a construction of the commonwealth, and an account of religion’s place in public life. It develops a clear line from the vulnerabilities and energies of individuals to the necessity of a sovereign authority empowered to secure peace. Its structure, use of definitions, and insistence on precise terms show Hobbes’s aspiration to rigorous demonstration. At the same time, its memorable imagery and rhetorical force amplify the central claim that a well-constituted commonwealth is an artifice designed to preserve safety and order.
Behemoth, or The Long Parliament, written late in Hobbes’s life and first published posthumously, turns to historical examination. Cast as a dialogue, it investigates the causes and course of England’s political crises, using concrete events to test the lessons of his earlier theory. Rather than constructing a new system, it applies established principles to the breakdown of authority, the force of faction, and the role of persuasive rhetoric and doctrine in public life. In this way, Behemoth complements Leviathan’s architectonic design with a practical analysis of how errors, ambitions, and institutional weaknesses can unravel a commonwealth.
Across these four works, unifying themes emerge with notable consistency. Hobbes seeks to demonstrate that lasting peace depends on a determinate, effective sovereign power authorized to make laws, adjudicate disputes, and coordinate collective action. He treats fear of insecurity and hope for protection as pivotal motives that rationally support political obligation. Law, for Hobbes, does not merely reflect moral sentiment; it organizes and stabilizes conduct under a public authority. He also offers sustained analysis of religion’s civic implications, arguing that disagreements over interpretation and allegiance can threaten unity, and that public peace requires a clear settlement of jurisdiction.
Hobbes’s stylistic hallmarks are evident throughout the collection. He relies on carefully framed definitions, moves by explicit steps, and aims for demonstrations modeled on geometrical reasoning. His prose is exact without being austere, deploying arresting images to render complex ideas intelligible. He writes with a polemical edge, engaging opponents and confronting prevailing assumptions about natural hierarchy, ecclesiastical privilege, and resistance. He integrates moral psychology, jurisprudence, and scriptural interpretation within a single argumentative frame. The result is a political philosophy that is both systematic and responsive, marked by conceptual economy, logical rigor, and a striking capacity to clarify disputed terms.
These works continue to matter because they articulate a durable framework for thinking about authority, liberty, and obligation under conditions of conflict and uncertainty. Hobbes helps define core questions that structure modern political theory: the basis of legitimate power, the nature of representation, the scope of law, the relation between conscience and public order, and the balance between security and freedom. His analyses shape debates in political philosophy, legal theory, and the study of constitutional design. Even where readers dissent, the clarity and ambition of his arguments provide a sharp standard against which alternative visions of political life can be measured.
Read together, the texts reveal both development and continuity. The Elements of Law sketches the path from human psychology to civic authority; De Cive sharpens the civic doctrines; Leviathan unifies these insights in a comprehensive system; Behemoth tests them against historical turmoil. Throughout, key concepts—covenant, authorization, sovereignty, law—remain central, while their implications are explored from different angles. The result is a layered understanding: theoretical first principles, institutional design, and historical diagnosis. This integrated perspective enables readers to see how Hobbes addresses origins of political order, sustains peace, and confronts the specific failures that can unsettle collective life.
Bringing these four books into a single edition invites sustained engagement with a body of work that transformed political thought. Each text stands on its own, yet together they display a remarkable unity of purpose: to explain why civil peace is both necessary and feasible, and how stable authority can be constructed from the motives and judgments of individuals. This collection allows readers to follow Hobbes’s arguments step by step, to see how his style and method serve his conclusions, and to appreciate why, centuries later, his analyses still speak with unsettling clarity to perennial political challenges.
Author Biography
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher whose work helped define early modern political thought. Writing across metaphysics, psychology, language, history, and politics, he is best known for Leviathan, which set out a rigorous account of human nature and civil authority amid the turmoil of the English Civil Wars. Hobbes advanced a systematic, materialist philosophy that sought geometric clarity in explaining motion, cognition, and society. His arguments for a social contract and undivided sovereignty became foundational touchstones—admired for precision and scope, criticized for severity and apparent absolutism. His books, composed in both Latin and English, circulated widely and provoked controversies that shaped intellectual life in seventeenth‑century Europe.
Hobbes grew up in Wiltshire and received a classical education, eventually studying at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in the early seventeenth century. He mastered Latin and Greek and absorbed the humanist curriculum, but became critical of scholastic Aristotelianism then prevailing in universities. After Oxford he entered long service as a tutor and secretary within the Cavendish household, a connection that provided stability and access to books, patrons, and travel. Journeys on the Continent exposed him to mathematical and scientific discussions in France and Italy. That exposure, alongside intensive reading of ancient historians and poets, shaped his commitment to a mechanistic view of nature and a historical, realist approach to politics.
His first major publication was a translation of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, printed in the late 1620s. Hobbes valued Thucydides for clear-eyed analysis of conflict and power, themes that informed his later political philosophy. During the 1630s he circulated philosophical notes and pursued contacts with Marin Mersenne’s Paris circle. He submitted a set of objections to René Descartes’s Meditations, reflecting deep engagement with contemporary metaphysics. Encounters with the new science—including discussions of motion associated with Galileo’s work—encouraged Hobbes to seek a deductive, geometrical method. By 1640 he had drafted The Elements of Law, a manuscript treatise that foreshadowed his mature theory of civil authority.
Amid mounting crisis in England, Hobbes published De Cive in Latin in the early 1640s, presenting a concise account of political obligation and the foundations of sovereignty. Residing for extended periods in Paris, he elaborated those arguments in Leviathan, issued in the early 1650s in English. Leviathan famously delineates the state of nature, the social covenant, and the rights and duties of sovereign power, while also treating language, science, religion, and history. The book’s stark anthropology and its claims about church–state relations generated immediate controversy. It unsettled both Royalist and Parliamentarian readers and drew charges of impiety, yet it quickly became a central reference in European debates on authority.
Hobbes conceived a comprehensive “Elements of Philosophy,” moving from body to man to citizen. He published De Corpore in the mid‑1650s, addressing logic, geometry, and physics; and De Homine soon after, treating vision, passion, speech, and action. These works aimed to ground civil science in a prior, materialist account of nature and mind. He also engaged vigorously with contemporaries over method. His exchanges with Robert Boyle on experimental practice and with John Wallis on geometry dramatized a wider dispute between deductive system-building and emerging laboratory science. Hobbes defended demonstration and criticized probabilistic experiment, while his opponents challenged his mathematics and claims to have solved classical problems.
After the Restoration, Hobbes’s earlier service as a tutor to the future Charles II provided a degree of protection, though his writings on religion and politics continued to face scrutiny. He composed works on liberty and necessity in the 1650s and 1660s, stemming from a sustained debate about free will, and wrote Behemoth, a pointed analysis of the causes of the English Civil Wars; that book circulated privately and appeared in print after his death. In old age he returned to literary pursuits, publishing English verse translations of Homer in the 1670s and composing autobiographical poetry. His resilience kept him active in philosophy and letters into his nineties.
Hobbes died in the late 1670s after a long career that reshaped the study of politics. His legacy remains contested yet durable. Some later thinkers rejected his conclusions while adopting his questions and methods; others drew directly on his materialism, nominalism, and contract theory. Modern political philosophy, international relations, legal theory, and the history of science continue to read his works for their analytic rigor and sweeping ambition. Leviathan’s imagery and arguments still frame discussions of state power, security, consent, and religious authority. Today he is studied both as a system‑builder seeking certainty and as a diagnostician of conflict in a fragile, changeable world.
Historical Context
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) wrote his major political works across one of the most turbulent centuries in English and European history. Born at Westport, near Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, the year of the Spanish Armada, he died at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire after witnessing the fall of the Stuarts, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth, and the Restoration. The Elements of Law (circulated 1640), De Cive (Latin, 1642), Leviathan (1651), and Behemoth (composed c. 1668) emerged from continuous engagement with crises of authority. Together they track shifting political conditions from the Personal Rule of Charles I to the reestablishment of monarchy under Charles II in 1660.
The early Stuart monarchy framed Hobbes’s intellectual formation. James VI and I (r. 1603–1625) sought union and uniformity; Charles I (r. 1625–1649) pursued fiscal expedients such as forced loans and Ship Money (tested in Hampden’s Case, 1637) during his Personal Rule (1629–1640). Archbishop William Laud’s ecclesiastical reforms, emphasizing ceremonial uniformity from 1633, sharpened confessional politics. These policies provoked constitutional debates over prerogative, common law, and parliamentary privilege, setting terms for later conflicts. Hobbes’s insistence on undivided sovereignty and civil peace responds to a landscape in which jurists like Sir Edward Coke, and pamphleteers across England, contested the limits of royal power.
Religious controversy in the British Isles detonated political crisis. In Scotland, resistance to the 1637 Prayer Book produced the National Covenant (1638) and the Bishops’ Wars (1639–1640), forcing Charles I to summon the Short Parliament (April–May 1640) and then the Long Parliament (from November 1640). In Ireland, the 1641 rebellion intensified fears of popery and massacre. Across England, petitions flooded Westminster; impeachment and attainder reshaped constitutional practices. This atmosphere of emergency made questions of authority, obedience, and war practical matters of survival. Hobbes’s systematic recasting of obligation, law, and church–state relations belongs to this archipelago-wide struggle over what could bind a fractured commonwealth.
The English Civil Wars (1642–1651) and the rise of the New Model Army transformed the political order. Battles at Edgehill (1642), Marston Moor (1644), and Naseby (1645) were accompanied by a pamphlet explosion and by experiments in propaganda, oath-taking, and emergency taxation. The trial and execution of Charles I in January 1649, and the abolition of the monarchy and House of Lords, made the fact of regime change impossible to ignore. The challenge, as Hobbes cast it, was to locate political right not in customary offices but in a structure of authorization that could persist through revolution—wherever effective sovereignty resided.
Under the Commonwealth (from 1649) and later the Protectorate (1653–1659) of Oliver Cromwell, England, Scotland, and Ireland were governed by novel institutions—Council of State, written constitutional instruments, and military administration. Radical sects found openings in an unsettled public sphere, while censorship tightened and loosened by turns. Hobbes spent much of the 1640s in Paris, moving among exiled royalists and the République des Lettres, tutoring the future Charles II. His return to England in 1651, amid amnesties and surveillance, exemplifies the ambiguities of loyalty in a time when de facto and de jure rule diverged, and when political prudence meant recalculating obedience.
The Restoration of 1660 brought the Declaration of Breda, the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (1660), and the reestablishment of bishops, but not a simple return to the prewar constitution. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, dominated early policy; the Clarendon Code (1661–1665) restricted dissenters. The Great Plague (1665) and the Great Fire of London (1666) intensified anxieties about divine judgment and social order. In 1666 the Commons considered measures against atheism, with “Hobbism” a target. Hobbes enjoyed Charles II’s protection yet faced accusations of impiety. This climate shaped later reflections on upheaval and explains why some of his political manuscripts circulated cautiously or appeared posthumously.
European warfare furnished a broader canvas. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) devastated central Europe and culminated in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which affirmed territorial sovereignty and reconfigured religious settlement. Hobbes’s political reasoning, though centered on England, conversed with continental debates about sovereignty and natural law. Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576) had earlier theorized sovereign indivisibility; Hugo Grotius’s On the Law of War and Peace (1625) sought principles beyond confessional divisions. Hobbes radicalized these themes by grounding obligation in covenant and fear of violent death rather than in scholastic metaphysics, aiming at a science of politics valid across regimes.
Hobbes’s education at Magdalen Hall, Oxford (matriculated 1603; B.A. 1608), was classically oriented and scholastic in method. Employed by the Cavendish family from 1608, he tutored across generations and traveled on the Continent. In 1629 he published a celebrated translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, praising the Athenian historian as a master of civil prudence. Thucydides offered a dramaturgy of faction, fear, and the collapse of norms—motifs that recur in Hobbes’s accounts of sedition and war. Renaissance humanism, learned philology, and the recovery of Greek political history provided both models and warnings for analyzing England’s own descent into conflict.
The scientific revolution reshaped Hobbes’s ambitions. He described encountering Euclid in middle life as transformative, cultivating a geometrical ideal of reasoning he sought to extend to politics. On travels he met Galileo in Florence (1636) and entered the Parisian circle of Marin Mersenne, encountering Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes. Hobbes contributed the Third Set of Objections to Descartes’s Meditations (1641), displaying a taste for materialist explanation and critique of scholastic forms. He aimed to build a civil science from definitions of motion, cause, and appetite, hoping that political conclusions about peace and sovereignty could be deduced with the clarity of geometry.
Oxford and Cambridge remained bastions of Aristotelian curricula well into the seventeenth century. After 1660, the Royal Society of London (founded 1660; chartered 1662) promoted experimental natural philosophy, with figures such as Robert Boyle. Hobbes famously disputed the epistemic authority of experimental “matters of fact,” arguing for demonstrative science against pumps and testimonies. This philosophical quarrel mirrored political ones: who authorizes knowledge, and how do institutions secure assent? The universities’ suspicion of “Hobbism,” along with ecclesiastical vigilance, created an intellectual environment in which arguments about civil authority, church governance, and educational reform were inseparable from methodological battles about proof and certainty.
Confessional conflict structured public life. Anglican episcopacy, defended by Laud, faced presbyterian reforms backed by Scottish Covenanters; during the 1640s, Independents in the New Model Army resisted presbyterian discipline. Sects—Baptists, Quakers, Fifth Monarchists, Ranters—multiplied amid weakened ecclesiastical courts. Debates over the Oath of Allegiance, toleration, and divine right filled pulpits and presses. Hobbes’s insistence that the civil sovereign determine public doctrine, and regulate clerical authority, was forged against this background of competing claims to scriptural interpretation and ecclesial jurisdiction. The prospect of multiple religious authorities within one polity was, for him, a standing recipe for sedition and war.
England’s legal and constitutional culture furnished adversaries and resources. Common lawyers invoked custom and precedent to cabin royal prerogative; parliamentarians cited the Petition of Right (1628) against taxation without consent; royalists appealed to ancient constitution and mixed monarchy. Pamphleteers such as Henry Parker (Parliamentarian) and royalist apologists argued in print during the 1640s. Hobbes, trained in humanist philology rather than courtroom practice, mined Roman law and the ius gentium while recasting natural law as precepts of self-preservation. He absorbed and resisted the language of right and liberty, substituting an account of authorization, representation, and artificial personhood meant to settle jurisdictional ambiguity.
Patronage sustained Hobbes’s career and shaped his outlook on order. For decades he served the Cavendish family—residing at Chatsworth and later Hardwick—and accompanied his pupils on the Grand Tour around 1610, studying in France and Italy. He also associated with William Cavendish, Marquess (later Duke) of Newcastle, a royalist commander. The households where he lived were administrative microcosms: hierarchies, obligations, and rules stylized as domestic peace. That embeddedness in aristocratic service clarified, for Hobbes, the dangers of faction at court and in parliament, and the need for visible authority. He died under Cavendish protection in December 1679, after a final illness following a stroke.
Print and censorship determined the diffusion of ideas. Licensing regimes under the Stationers’ Company, parliamentary ordinances during the 1640s, and Restoration policies all policed the press unevenly. Manuscript circulation was a strategic option for controversial theses. Latin publication in Paris (as with De Cive, 1642) allowed entry into continental debates, while English publication in London (notably 1651) brought arguments directly into the fray of the public sphere. Booksellers in Amsterdam and Paris served as alternative channels when London was hostile. Official suspicion of “Hobbism,” along with royal favor, produced a paradox: wide notoriety coupled with suppression, including the posthumous appearance of sensitive political narratives.
Military and fiscal revolutions changed the scale of governance. Gunpowder warfare, trace italienne fortifications, and the logistics of standing armies demanded reliable taxation and administrative coordination. In England, innovations such as excise (from 1643) and assessments for the New Model Army, and later naval mobilization in the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652–1654; 1665–1667), illustrated the stakes. Continental examples—Cardinal Richelieu’s centralization in France, the Spanish Monarchy’s fiscal crunches, and imperial fragmentation in Germany—supplied comparative cases. Hobbes theorized a sovereign capable of compelling contributions and monopolizing force, seeing dispersed jurisdictions, immunities, and independent corporations as obstacles to the peace that only unified authority could secure.
Hobbes wrote with unusual stylistic ambition in both Latin and English. His political vocabulary—state of nature, covenant, authorization, representation, natural person, artificial person—sought to replace scholastic idioms with precise definitions. He fused rhetorical clarity with analytic austerity, using dialogues and histories as well as systematic treatise. Scriptural exegesis served civil purposes, subordinating prophecy, miracles, and ecclesial power to sovereign judgment. This philological and philosophical strategy made his arguments intelligible beyond learned elites, while inviting charges of impiety. Across his oeuvre, conceptual innovation answered practical needs: to make coercive authority intelligible, to demystify rebellion, and to tame the volatile energies of print-fueled politics.
The afterlife of Hobbes’s political thought was immediate and contested. Royalists and republicans alike mined and denounced his claims; universities censured “Hobbism,” even as readers across England, France, and the Dutch Republic engaged his arguments. Samuel Pufendorf reframed natural law in a less stark idiom (De jure naturae et gentium, 1672); Baruch Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) paralleled Hobbes’s critique of clerical power while diverging on democracy and freedom. Later contractarians, including John Locke, defined themselves partly against him. Yet Hobbes’s central question—how to secure peace among fearful, ambitious equals—remained the horizon for political theory shaped by the wars and revolutions he survived.
Synopsis (Selection)
The Elements of Law
An early treatise that grounds politics in a psychology of appetites and aversions, deriving laws of nature and political obligation from self-preservation. It argues that peace requires a unified sovereign established by covenant, foreshadowing Hobbes’s later system.
De Cive (On the Citizen)
A systematic account of civil philosophy that articulates natural right, the social contract, and the rights and duties of sovereigns and subjects. It treats liberty, obedience, and religion’s subordination to civil authority as conditions for public peace.
Leviathan
Hobbes’s mature synthesis moves from a materialist view of human nature and the state of nature to a rationale for instituting an absolute sovereign to prevent civil strife. It also refutes competing political and religious doctrines and delineates the relation of church and commonwealth.
Behemoth, or The Long Parliament
A dialogue narrating and analyzing the English Civil War and its aftermath, tracing how faction, clerical influence, and divided authority produced unrest. It uses recent history to illustrate the perils of weakened sovereignty and the necessity of strong civil power.
The Political Works of Thomas Hobbes (4 Books in One Edition)
The Elements of Law
Contents
To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Newcastle, Governor to the Prince his Highness, one of His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council
The Epistle Dedicatory
My Most Honoured Lord,
From the two principal parts of our nature, Reason and Passion, have proceeded two kinds of learning, mathematical and dogmatical. The former is free from controversies and dispute, because it consisteth in comparing figures and motion only; in which things truth and the interest of men, oppose not each other. But in the later there is nothing not disputable, because it compareth men, and meddleth with their right and profit; in which as oft as reason is against a man, so oft will a man be against reason. And from hence it comes, that they who have written of justice and policy in general do all invade each other, and themselves, with contradiction. To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason, there is no way, but first, to put such principles down for a foundation, as passion not mistrusting may not seek to displace: And afterward to build thereon the truth of cases in the law of nature (which hitherto have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole be inexpugnable. Now (my Lord) the principles fit for such a foundation, are those which I have heretofore acquainted your Lordship withal in private discourse; and which, by your command I have here put into method. To examine cases thereby, between sovereign and sovereign, or between sovereign and subject, I leave to them, that shall find leisure, and encouragement thereto. For my part, I present this to your Lordship, for the true, and only foundation of such science. For the style, it is therefore the worse, because whilst I was writing I consulted more with logic, than with rhetoric. But for the doctrine, it is not slightly proved; and the conclusions thereof, are of such nature, as for want of them, government and peace have been nothing else, to this day, but mutual fear. And it would be an incomparable benefit to commonwealth, that every man held the opinions concerning law and policy, here delivered. The ambition therefore of this book, in seeking by your Lordship's countenance, to insinuate itself with those whom the matter it containeth most nearly concerneth, is to be excused. For myself, I desire no greater honour, than I enjoy already in your Lordship's known favour; unless it be, that you would be pleased in continuance thereof, to give me more exercise in your commands; which, as I am bound by your many great favours, I shall obey, being
My most honoured Lord
Your Lordship's most humble and obliged Servant
Thomas Hobbes
PART I
Chapter 1: The General Division of Man's Natural Faculties
1. The true and perspicuous explication of the Elements of Laws, Natural and Politic, which is my present scope, dependeth upon the knowledge of what is human nature, what is a body politic, and what it is we call a law. Concerning which points, as the writings of men from antiquity downward have still increased, so also have the doubts and controversies concerning the same, and seeing that true knowledge begetteth not doubt, nor controversy, but knowledge; it is manifest from the present controversies, that they which have heretofore written thereof, have not well understood their own subject.
2. Harm I can do none though I err no less than they. For I shall leave men but as they are in doubt and dispute. But intending not to take any principle upon trust, but only to put men in mind what they know already, or may know by their own experience, I hope to err the less; and when I do, it must proceed from too hasty concluding, which I will endeavour as much as I can to avoid.
3. On the other side, if reasoning aright I win not consent (which may very easily happen) from them that being confident of their own knowledge weigh not what is said, the fault is not mine but theirs. For as it is my part to show my reasons, so it is theirs to bring attention.
4. Man's nature is the sum of his natural faculties and powers, as the faculties of nutrition, motion, generation, sense, reason, &c. For these powers we do unanimously call natural, and are contained in the definition of man, under these words, animal and rational.
5. According to the two principal parts of man, I divide his faculties into two sorts, faculties of the body, and faculties of the mind.
6. Since the minute and distinct anatomy of the powers of the body is nothing necessary to the present purpose, I will only sum them up into these three heads, power nutritive, power motive, and power generative.
7. Of the powers of the mind there be two sorts, cognitive or imaginative or conceptive; and motive. And first of the cognitive.
8. For the understanding of what I mean by the power cognitive, we must remember and acknowledge that there be in our minds continually certain images or conceptions of the things without us, insomuch that if a man could be alive, and all the rest of the world annihilated, he should nevertheless retain the image thereof, and of all those things which he had before seen and perceived in it; every man by his own experience knowing that the absence or destruction of things once imagined, doth not cause the absence or destruction of the imagination itself. This imagery and representations of the qualities of things without us is that we call our cognition, imagination, ideas, notice, conception, or knowledge of them. And the faculty, or power, by which we are capable of such knowledge, is that I here call power cognitive, or conceptive, the power of knowing or conceiving.
Chapter 2: The Cause of Sense
1. Having declared what I mean by the word conception, and other words equivalent thereunto, I come to the conceptions themselves, to show their difference, their causes, and the manner of their production as far as is necessary for this place.
2. Originally all conceptions proceed from the actions of the thing itself, whereof it is the conception. Now when the action is present, the conception it produceth is called SENSE, and the thing by whose action the same is produced is called the OBJECT of sense.
3. By our several organs we have several conceptions of several qualities in the objects; for by sight we have a conception or image composed of colour or figure, which is all the notice and knowledge the object imparteth to us of its nature by the eye. By hearing we have a conception called sound, which is all the knowledge we have of the quality of the object from the ear. And so the rest of the senses also are conceptions of several qualities, or natures of their objects.
4. Because the image in vision consisting in colour and shape is the knowledge we have of the qualities of the object of that sense; it is no hard matter for a man to fall into this opinion, that the same colour and shape are the very qualities themselves; and for the same cause, that sound and noise are the qualities of the bell, or of the air. And this opinion hath been so long received, that the contrary must needs appear a great paradox; and yet the introduction of species visible and intelligible (which is necessary for the maintenance of that opinion) passing to and fro from the object, is worse than any paradox, as being a plain impossibility. I shall therefore endeavour to make plain these four points:
(1) That the subject wherein colour and image are inherent, is not the object or thing seen.
(2) That that is nothing without us really which we call an image or colour.
(3) That the said image or colour is but an apparition unto us of that motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain or spirits, or some internal substance of the head.
(4) That as in conception by vision, so also in the conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object, but the sentient.
5. Every man hath so much experience as to have seen the sun and other visible objects by reJection in the water and in glasses, and this alone is sufficient for this conclusion: that colour and image may be there where the thing seen is not. But because it may be said that notwithstanding the image in the water be not in the object, but a thing merely phantastical, yet there may be colour really in the thing itself; I will urge further this experience: that divers times men see directly the same object double, as two candles for one, which may happen by distemper, or otherwise without distemper if a man will, the organs being either in their right temper, or equally distempered. The colours and figures in two such images of the same thing cannot be inherent both therein, because the thing seen cannot be in two places: one of these images thereof is not inherent in the object. But seeing the organs of sight are then in equal temper or equal distemper, the one of them is no more inherent than the other, and consequently neither of them both are in the object; which is the first proposition mentioned in the precedent section.
6. Secondly, that the image of any thing seen by reJection in glass or water or the like, is not any thing in or behind the glass, or in or under the water, every man may prove to himself; which is the second proposition.
7. For the third, we are to consider first, that upon every great agitation or concussion of the brain, as it happeneth from a stroke, especially if the stroke be upon the eye, whereby the optic nerve suffereth any great violence, there appeareth before the eyes a certain light, which light is nothing without, but an apparition only, all that is real being the concussion or motion of the parts of that nerve. From which experience we may conclude, that apparition of light without, is really nothing but motion within. If therefore from lucid bodies there can be derived motion, so as to affect the optic nerve in such manner as is proper thereunto, there will follow an image of light somewhere in that line by which the motion was last derived unto the eye; that is to say, in the object, if we look directly on it, and in the glass or water, when we look upon it in the line of reJection, which in effect is the third proposition, namely, That image and colour is but an apparition unto us of that motion, agitation, or alteration, which the object worketh in the brain, or spirits, or some internal substance in the head.
8. But that from all lucid, shining and illuminated bodies, there is a motion produced to the eye, and, through the eye, to the optic nerve, and so into the brain, by which that apparition of light or colour is effected, is not hard to prove. And first, it is evident that the fire, the only lucid body here on earth, worketh by motion equally every way; insomuch as the motion thereof stopped or inclosed, it is presently extinguished, and no more fire. And farther, that that motion, whereby the fire worketh, is dilatation, and contraction of itself alternately, commonly called scintillation or glowing, is manifest also by experience. From such motion in the fire must needs arise a rejection or casting from itself of that part of the medium which is contiguous to it, whereby that part also rejecteth the next, and so successively one part beateth back the other to the very eye; and in the same manner the exterior part of the eye (the laws of refraction still observed) presseth the interior. Now the interior coat of the eye is nothing else but a piece of the optic nerve, and therefore the motion is still continued thereby into the brain, and by resistance or reaction of the brain, is also a rebound in the optic nerve again, which we not conceiving as motion or rebound from within, think it is without, and call it light; as hath been already shewed by the experience of a stroke. We have no reason to doubt, that the fountain of light, the sun, worketh any other wise than the fire, at least in this matter, and thus all vision hath its original from such motion as is here described. For where there is no light, there is no sight; and therefore colour also must be the same thing with light, as being the effect of lucid bodies: their difference being only this, that when the light cometh directly from the fountain to the eye, or indirectly by reflection from clean and polite bodies, and such as have no particular motion internal to alter it, we call it light. But when it cometh to the eyes by reflection from uneven, rough, and coarse bodies, or such as are affected with internal motion of their own, that may alter it, then we call it colour; colour and light differing only in this, that the one is pure, the other a perturbed light. By that which hath been said, not only the truth of the third proposition, but also the whole manner of producing light and colour, is apparent.
9. As colour is not inherent in the object, but an effect thereof upon us, caused by such motion in the object, as hath been described: so neither is sound in the thing we hear, but in ourselves. One manifest sign thereof is: that as a man may see, so also he may hear double or treble, by multiplication of echoes, which echoes are sounds as well as the original; and not being in one and the same place, cannot be inherent in the body that maketh them. Nothing can make any thing in itself: the clapper hath not sound in it, but motion, and maketh motion in the internal parts of the bell so the bell hath motion, and not sound. That imparteth motion to the air; and the air hath motion, but not sound. The air imparteth motion by the ear and nerves to the brain; and the brain hath motion but not sound. From the brain it reboundeth back into the nerves outward, and thence it becometh an apparition without, which we call sound. And to proceed to the rest of the senses, it is apparent enough, that the smell and taste of the same thing, are not the same to every man, and therefore are not in the thing smelt or tasted, but in the men. So likewise the heat we feel from the fire is manifestly in us, and is quite different from the heat that is in the fire. For our heat is pleasure or pain, according as it is extreme or moderate; but in the coal there is no such thing. By this the fourth and last of the propositions is proved (viz.) That as in conception by vision, so also in the conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence is not the object, but the sentient.
10. And from thence also it followeth, that whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they are not there, but are seemings and apparitions only. The things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is by sense to be corrected. For as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me, when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.
Chapter 3: Of Imagination and the Kinds Thereof
1. As standing water put into motion by the stroke of a stone, or blast of wind, doth not presently give over moving as soon as the wind ceaseth, or the stone settleth: so neither doth the effect cease which the object hath wrought upon the brain, so soon as ever by turning aside of the organ the object ceaseth to work; that is to say, though the sense be past, the image or conception remaineth; but more obscurely while we are awake, because some object or other continually plieth and soliciteth our eyes, and ears, keeping the mind in a stronger motion, whereby the weaker doth not easily appear. And this obscure conception is that we call PHANTASY or IMAGINATION: imagination being (to define it) conception remaining, and by little and little decaying from and after the act of sense.
2. But when present sense is not, as in SLEEP, there the images remaining after sense (when there be any) as in dreams, are not obscure, but strong and clear, as in sense itself. The reason IS, because that which obscured and made the conceptions weak, namely sense, and present operation of the objects, is removed. For sleep is the privation of the act of sense, (the power remaining) and dreams are the imaginations of them that sleep.
3. The causes of DREAMS (if they be natural) are the actions or violence of the inward parts of a man upon his brain, by which the passages of sense, by sleep benumbed, are restored to their motion. The signs by which this appeareth to be so, are the differences of dreams proceeding from the different accidents of man's body. Old men being commonly less healthful and less free from inward pains, are thereby more subject to dreams, especially such dreams as be painful: as dreams of lust, or dreams of anger, according as the heart, or other parts within, work more or less upon the brain, by more or less heat. So also the descent of different sorts of phlegm maketh one to dream of different tastes of meats or drinks. And I believe there is a reciprocation of motion from the brain to the vital parts, and back from the vital parts to the brain; whereby not only imagination begetteth motion in those parts; but also motion in those parts begetteth imagination like to that by which it was begotten. If this be true, and that sad imaginations nourish the spleen, then we see also a cause, why a strong spleen reciprocally causeth fearful dreams. And why the effects of lasciviousness may in a dream produce the image of some person that hath caused them. If it were well observed, whether the image of the person in a dream be as obedient to the accidental heat of him that dreameth, as waking his heat is to the person, and if so, then is such motion reciprocal. Another sign that dreams are caused by the action of the inward parts, is the disorder and casual consequence of one conception or image to another: for when we are waking, the antecedent thought or conception introduceth, and is cause of the consequent, as the water followeth a man's finger upon a dry and level table. But in dreams there is commonly no coherence (and when there is, it is by chance), which must proceed from this, that the brain in dreams is not restored to its motion in every part alike; whereby it cometh to pass, that our thoughts appear like the stars between the flying clouds, not in the order which a man would choose to observe them in, but as the uncertain flight of broken clouds permit.
4. As when the water, or any liquid thing moved at once by divers movements, receiveth one motion compounded of them all; so also the brain or spirits therein, having been stirred by divers objects, composeth an imagination of divers conceptions that appeared. singly to the sense. As for example, the sense sheweth us at one time the figure of a mountain, and at another time the colour of gold; but the imagination afterwards hath them both at once in a golden mountain. From the same cause it is, there appear unto us castles in the air, chimeras, and other monsters which are not in rerum natura, but have been conceived by the sense in pieces at several times. And this composition is that which we commonly call FICTION of the mind.
5. There is yet another kind of. imagination, which for clearness contendeth with sense, as well as a dream; and that is, when the action of sense hath been long or vehement: and the experience thereof is more frequent in the sense of seeing, than the rest. An example whereof is, the image remaining before the eye after a steadfast looking upon the sun. Also, those little images that appear before the eyes in the dark (whereof I think every man hath experience, but they most of all, that are timorous or superstitious) are examples of the same. And these, for distinction sake, may be called PHANTASMS.
6. By the senses (which are numbered according to the organs to be five) we take notice (as hath been said already) of the objects without us; and that notice is our conception thereof: but we take notice also some way or other of our conceptions. For when the conception of the same thing cometh again, we take notice that it is again; that is to say, that we have had the same conception before; which is as much as to imagine a thing past; which is impossible to sense, which is only of things present. This therefore may be accounted a sixth sense, but internal, not external, as the rest, and is commonly called REMEMBRANCE.
7. For the manner by which we take notice of a conception past, we are to remember, that in the definition of imagination, it is said to be a conception by little and little decaying, or growing more obscure. An obscure conception is that which representeth the whole object together, but none of the smaller parts by themselves; and as more or fewer parts be represented, so is the conception or representation said to be more or less clear. Seeing then the conception, which when it was first produced by sense, was clear, and represented the parts of the object distinctly; and when it cometh again is obscure, we find missing somewhat that we expected; by which we judge it past and decayed. For example, a man that is present in a foreign city, seeth not only whole streets, but can also distinguish particular houses, and parts of houses; departed thence, he cannot distinguish them so particularly in his mind as he did, some house or turning escaping him; yet is this to remember the city; when afterwards there escapeth him more particulars, this is also to remember, but not so well. In process of time, the image of the city returneth, but as of a mass of building only, which is almost to have forgotten it. Seeing then remembrance is more or less, as we find more or less obscurity, why may not we well think remembrance to be nothing else but the missing of parts, which every man expecteth should succeed after they have a conception of the whole? To see at great distance of place, and to remember at great distance of time, is to have like conceptions of the thing: for there wanteth distinction of parts in both; the one conception being weak by operation at distance, the other by decay.
8. And from this that hath been said, there followeth, that a man can never know he dreameth; he may dream he doubteth, whether it be a DREAM or no: but the clearness of the imagination representeth every thing with as many parts as doth sense itself, and consequently, he can take notice of nothing but as present; whereas to think he dreameth, is to think those his conceptions past, that is to say, obscurer than they were in the sense: so that he must think them both as clear, and not as clear as sense; which is impossible.
9. From the same ground it proceedeth, that men wonder not in their dreams at places and persons, as they would do waking: for waking, a man would think it strange to be in a place wherein he never was before, and remember nothing of how he came there. But in a dream, there cometh little of that kind into consideration. The clearness of conception in a dream, taketh away distrust, unless the strangeness be excessive, as to think himself fallen from on high without hurt, and then most commonly he awaketh.
10. Nor is it impossible for a man to be so far deceived, as when his dream is past, to think it real: for if he dream of such things as are ordinarily in his mind,. and in such order as he useth to do waking, and withal that he laid him down to sleep in the place where he findeth himself when he awaketh (all which may happen) I know no Kritirion or mark by which he can discern whether it were a dream or not, and do therefore the less wonder to hear a man sometimes to tell his dream for a truth, or to take it for a vision.
Chapter 4: Of the Several Kinds of Discursion of the Mind
1. The succession of conceptions in the mind, their series or consequence of one after another, may be casual and incoherent, as in dreams for the most part; and it may be orderly, as when the former thought introduceth the latter; and this is discourse of the mind. But because the word discourse is commonly taken for the coherence and consequence of words, I will (to avoid equivocation) call it DISCURSION.
2. The cause of the coherence or consequence of one conception to another, is their first coherence, or consequence at that time when they were produced by sense. As for example: from St. Andrew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their names are read together; from St. Peter to a stone, for the same cause; from stone to foundation, because we see them together; and for the same cause, from foundation to church, from church to people, and from people to tumult. And according to this example, the mind may run almost from any thing to any thing. But as to the sense the conception of cause and effect succeed one another. so may they after sense in the imagination. And for the most part they do so. The cause whereof is the appetite of them, who, having a conception of the end, have next unto it a conception of the next means to that end. As when a man, from the thought of honour to which he hath an appetite, cometh to the thought of wisdom, which is the next means thereto; and from thence to the thought of study, which is the next means to wisdom, etc.
3. To omit that kind of discursion by which we proceed from any thing to any thing, there are of the other kind divers sorts. As first in the senses: there are certain coherences of conceptions, which we may call RANGING. Examples whereof are: a man's casting his eye upon the ground, to look about for some small thing lost; the hounds casting about at a fault in hunting; and the ranging of spaniels. And herein we take a beginning arbitrarily.
4. Another sort of discursion is, when the appetite giveth a man his beginning, as in the example before adduced: where honour, to which a man hath appetite, maketh him to think upon the next means of attaining it, and that again of the next, &c. And this the Latins call sagacitas, SAGACITY, and we may call it hunting or tracing, as dogs trace the beast by the smell, and men hunt them by their footsteps; or as men hunt after riches, place, or knowledge.
5. There is yet another kind of discursion beginning with appetite to recover something lost, proceeding from the present backward, from the thought of the place where we miss it, to the thought of the place from whence we came last; and from the thought of that, to the thought of a place before, till we have in our mind some place, wherein we had the thing we miss: and this is called REMINISCENCE.
6. The remembrance of the succession of one thing to another, that is, of what was antecedent, and what consequent, and what concomitant, is called an EXPERIMENT; whether the same be made by us voluntarily, as when a man putteth any thing into the fire, to see what effect the fire will produce upon it; or not made by us, as when we remember a fair morning after a red evening. To have had many experiments, is that we call EXPERIENCE, which is nothing else but remembrance of what antecedents have been followed with what consequents.
7. No man can have in his mind a conception of the future, for the future is not yet. But of our conceptions of the past, we make a future; or rather, call past, future relatively. Thus after a man hath been accustomed to see like antecedents followed by like consequents, whensoever he seeth the like come to pass to any thing he had seen before, he looks there should follow it the same that followed then. As for example: because a man hath often seen offences followed by punishment, when he seeth an offence in present, he thinketh punishment to be consequent thereto. But consequent unto that which is present, men call future. And thus we make remembrance to be prevision or conjecture of things to come, or EXPECTATION or PRESUMPTION of the future.
8. In the same manner, if a man seeth in present that which he hath seen before, he thinks that that which was antecedent to what he saw before, is also antecedent to that he presently seeth. As for example: he that hath seen the ashes remain after the fire, and now again seeth ashes, concludeth again there hath been fire. And this is called CONJECTURE of the past, or presumption of fact.
9. When a man hath so often observed like antecedents to be followed by like consequents, that whensoever he seeth the antecedent, he looketh again for the consequent; or when he seeth the consequent, he maketh account there hath been the like antecedent; then he calleth both the antecedent and the consequent, SIGNS one of another, as clouds are a sign of rain to come, and rain of clouds past.
10. This taking of signs from experience, is that wherein men do ordinarily think, the difference stands between man and man in wisdom, by which they commonly understand a man's whole ability or power cognitive. But this is an error; for these signs are but conjectural; and according as they have often or seldom failed, so their assurance is more or less; but never full and evident; for though a man hath always seen the day and night to follow one another hitherto; yet can he not thence conclude they shall do so, or that they have done so eternally. Experience concludeth nothing universally. If the signs hit twenty times for once missing, a man may lay a wager of twenty to one of the event; but may not conclude it for a truth. But by this it is plain, that they shall conjecture best, that have most experience: because they have most signs to conjecture by; which is the reason that old men are more prudent, that is, conjecture better, caeteris paribus, than young. For, being older, they remember more; and experience is but remembrance. And men of quick imagination, caeteris paribus, are more prudent than those whose imaginations are slow: for they observe more in less time. And PRUDENCE is nothing else but conjecture from experience, or taking signs of experience warily, that is, that the experiments from which one taketh such signs be all remembered; for else the cases are not alike, that seem so.
11. As in conjectural things concerning past and future, it is prudence to conclude from experience, what is likely to come to pass, or to have passed already; so is it an error to conclude from it, that is so or so called. That is to say, we cannot from experience conclude, that any thing is to be called just or unjust, true or false, nor any proposition universal whatsoever, except it be from remembrance of the use of names imposed arbitrarily by men. For example: to have heard a sentence given (in the like case the like sentence a thousand times) is not enough to conclude that the sentence is just (though most men have no other means to conclude by); but it is necessary, for the drawing of such conclusion, to trace and find out, by many experiences, what men do mean by calling things just and unjust, and the like. Farther, there is another caveat to be taken in concluding by experience, from the tenth section of the second chapter., that is, that we conclude not such things to be without, that are within us.
Chapter 5: Of Names, Reasoning, and Discourse of the Tongue
1. Seeing the succession of conceptions in the mind are caused (as hath been said before) by the succession they had one to another when they were produced by the senses; and that there is no conception that hath not been produced immediately before or after innumerable others, by the innumerable acts of sense; it must needs follow, that one conception followeth not another, according to our election, and the need we have of them, but as it chanceth us to hear or see such things as shall bring them to our mind. The experience we have hereof, is in such brute beasts, which, having the providence to hide the remains and superfluity of their meat, do nevertheless want the remembrance of the place where they hid it, and thereby make no benefit thereof in their hunger. But man, who in this point beginneth to advance himself above the nature of beasts, hath observed and remembered the cause of this defect, and to amend the same, hath imagined and devised to set up a visible or other sensible mark, the which when he seeth again, may bring to his mind the thought he had when he set it up. A MARK therefore is a sensible object which a man erecteth voluntarily to himself, to the end to remember thereby somewhat past, when the same is objected to his sense again. As men that have passed by a rock at sea, set up some mark, whereby to remember their former danger, and avoid it.
