Resumen
Resumen de Leviatán
Para quién es
For readers who love politics, history and philosophy, and anyone curious about the social contract, human nature and why we obey governments.
De qué trata este libro
Leviathan is a work of political philosophy by Thomas Hobbes, an English thinker, published in 1651. He wrote it while England was torn by civil war and while he lived in exile in France. King Charles I had been put to death in 1649, and Hobbes had watched neighbours turn on each other over the power of king, Parliament and church. He asked a plain question. What makes a society hold together, and what makes it fall apart?
His answer is bold. He does not begin with kings or with God. He begins with the human body, its senses and its appetites, and from there he builds step by step up to the state. The title comes from the sea monster in the Book of Job. Hobbes uses it for the commonwealth, a huge artificial person made from the many people who agree to be ruled.
In this summary you will get the main line of the book in the order Hobbes gives it. You will meet his picture of human nature, his famous thought experiment of life without government, and his case for a sovereign with strong and undivided power. You will also see how he treats religion, and why readers have argued with him ever since. Let us start with the way Hobbes sees a human being.
En este resumen
- 1People are bodies in motionFree
- 2Desire drives everything we do
- 3Nature makes us equal enough to fight
- 4Without government, life is war
- 5Reason finds laws that point to peace
- 6We build a sovereign by mutual covenant
- 7The sovereign must hold undivided power
- 8Religion belongs inside the commonwealth
- 9Hobbes divides readers but remains in the argument
Idea clave 1 de 9
People are bodies in motion
Hobbes opens with a claim that shapes everything after it. Human beings, he says, are bodies like any other, and everything they do can be explained by matter in motion. He was a keen reader of the new science of his time, and he admired the way geometry moves from simple definitions to firm conclusions. He wants politics to work the same way.
He starts with sense. When an object presses on our eyes, ears or skin, the pressure travels inward and causes a motion in the brain and heart. That motion is what we call a sensation. Imagination is only the fading of that motion once the object is gone, and memory is the same thing seen from another side.
Thought, for Hobbes, is a train of such images that follow one another. Some trains wander freely, like a daydream. Others are guided by a purpose, as when we hunt in our minds for the cause of an event or the means to a goal. Dreams, he adds, are just imagination while the senses are at rest.
He gives a special place to language. Words are marks we set down so that we can remember our thoughts and share them. Reason, in his account, is nothing more than reckoning, which means adding and subtracting the names of things. This is why careful definitions matter so much to him, and why he blames much confusion on words that mean nothing.
What does this mean for a reader today? Hobbes treats the mind as part of nature and not as a separate spirit. That view made many of his own readers uneasy, but it also made his politics sharply realistic. If people are natural machines driven by pushes and pulls, then a ruler can study them as one studies any other natural force. The rest of the book follows from that starting point.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 219,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 14 h 35 min
- Listening time24 h 20 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about Leviatán
What is Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes about?
It is a work of political philosophy that argues people need a strong sovereign to escape a violent state of nature. Hobbes builds the case from human psychology, a social contract and the need for undivided authority.
What does the Leviathan mean in Hobbes's book?
The Leviathan is the commonwealth itself. Hobbes takes the name from the sea monster in the Book of Job and pictures the state as an artificial giant made up of all its people under one sovereign.
When was Leviathan written and why?
Hobbes published it in 1651, after the English Civil War and the execution of Charles I. He wrote it to explain why governments are needed and why citizens owe them obedience.
Is Leviathan hard to read?
The main argument, found in the first two parts, is clear, and many readers start with chapters thirteen to eighteen.
What did Hobbes mean by the state of nature?
It is the condition of people with no common power over them. Hobbes says it would be a war of every person against every person, with constant fear and no secure industry, arts or society.