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First a word about the edition that I read. It was the Oxford World's Classics paperback. It claims to have modernized the spelling. I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned doth, hath, belongeth is not modern. It wouldn't have been very hard for them to change it to does, has and belongs. Many people complain about the way it was written, making it hard to read. I found that if you read the difficult parts aloud, as if you were giving a lecture, they are easier to understand the first time through. Definitely not for speed-readers.
Hobbes was a remarkable man. He published Leviathan when he was in his early 60's. For someone of his age he was very much in tune with the science of his day. One can only speculate that if he were to have been born 400 years later, with modern science at hand, he would have been considered the greatest philosopher of all time.
The first part of his book, "Of Man" goes about providing definitions of what must be virtually all of humankinds various behaviours and emotions. He also goes on to define what is basic human nature. It is here, without the benefit of modern science, where his philosophy, indeed the cornerstone of his philosophy, gets off on the wrong foot. Thanks to modern archaeology we know that humans are not solitary creatures by nature, but social animals.
In the second part of his book "Of Commonwealth" he spells out why we form commonwealths, and how a commonwealth should run. Again he is very thorough in looking at all aspects of a government and what it needs to do. He defines the power of the sovereign, the making of laws, the consequences of breaking these laws, and where the sovereign gets authority to carry out the consequences. I felt that he gave the sovereign far too much power, and he is there, it would seem, for life. The people only make covenants between themselves that this person or peoples are to be sovereign. Once a sovereign is declared, there is no covenant, or constitution, between the people and the sovereign; the sovereign is given Carte Blanche powers. One must remember that this book was written while Hobbes was in "exile" in Paris during the English civil war and the subsequent government of Cromwell. And while he is careful to call the sovereign "a person or assembly of people" it is quite obvious that he prefers the singular.
The third part of the book "Of a Christian Commonwealth" was for a large part just skimmed over by me. Some people suggest that Hobbes, because of some of the things he says in the first half of the book, was really an atheist. They say that he wrote this to fool the church to thinking otherwise of him. After skimming through this part I feel that Hobbes was more likely a reformer, someone who definitely believed in God but didn't agree with the way the church and the Pope were behaving back then. I myself am an atheist and cannot imagine writing so copiously on a subject that I do not believe in, never mind doing all of the Biblical research that Hobbes must have.
The fourth part, and the conclusion really don't have much to say. He is busy blasting the Pope, the Catholic Church and Aristotle.
All in all some good philosophical points. His definitions of free will and spirit I think should be more widely taught. The fact that this edition could have been modernized a bit more, as well as the last half of the book being pretty useless today, leads me to give it three stars.

Hobbes Leviathan is an essential read. Firstly I admire Thomas Hobbes for his bravery during the 17th century when this book was written and secondly for his grim view of humanity. Atheism during the height of the Catholic Church was strictly taboo and he had to write this piece very cleverly. Leviathan is a must for those whom are interested in the philosophical ideology of who we are and what makes us strive for things that we do and generally what makes us as men tick.

This book is complex. The common "run-on" sentences used in philosophy and the Old English style makes the book difficult to understand at times. It almost seems to be pure thought with no organization which has been jotted down in 728 pages.

In all, I like to call Hobbes Leviathan the "Atheists Bible" (though perhaps Hobbes would not like this type of name for one of his works) and I truly believe that this work is just as essential and important to philosophy as Plato.

Leviathan is one of the first books written after philosophy begun to detach itself from the Catholic inspired medieval thinking, also marking the beginning of the influence philosophy received from the scientific thinking, a point not suficiently y explored by Thomas Hobbes but which one we can get with the benefit of hindsight.

Leviathan is an old Fenician word for a mythical crocodile, quoted in some verses of the biblical Book of Job, an taken by Thomas Hobbes as meaning the representation of a powerfull governor totally devoted to do his most to the benefit of the Commonwealth. In Hobbes mind the most efficient form of government was monarchy, but he takes a lot of time to analyse also Democracy and Aristocracy. One has to keep in mind that the time the book was written was one of internal revolt, a civil intestine strife in England, and the objective of Hobbes was to lay the foundations for human actions conducive to an equilibrium within the state, ending war.

His book can be also be taken as one where many important aspects of Right and Laws are aprehended, from the perspective of a deeply religious anglican man, that tried his best to separate, in his words, the Kingdoms of men (where civil laws are imperative) from the Kingdom of God (Naturall Right). He does extensive analysis of God's Laws and its importance to the balance in the relationship between men.

The edition is a very good one, with a good introduction and is a copy of the text as written in the 17th century, exhibiting an archaic English sometimes difficult to understand. Also, some quotations in Greek and in Latin are not translated, despite all the effort the author makes to turn them inteligible to the reader.

The book could be understood as antipodal to Machiavellian's The Prince, because power is not taken here as something good in itself, but only as a means of carrying the security and hapinnes the kingdom subjects deserve.

This book provides fascinating sketches of four prominent individuals who lived during the time of England's King Charles I and the British Commonwealth. Two are Royalists, and two are Puritans/Commonwealthmen which makes for a balanced book. I actually learned a lot about the political issues at stake during the English Civil War through reading these four fascinating sketches. Rowse writes in a witty and engaging style which makes this book a pleasure to read.

A good book from somebody that really knows the subject. Preston King have before organized lots of relevant articles about Hobbes, in four volumes. Now, he gifts us with an interesting comparative analyses of Bodin and Hobbes, about something that is important to everybody who was trying to understand State and sovereignity: how can we work with order and human beings?

The authors begin their review of the 17th-century Hobbes-Boyle controversy by declaring their intent to take a strongly pro-Hobbes stance, so it is not surprising that they end by concluding that "Hobbes was right". (About what, is not clear.)

Their stated reason for adapting this biased perspective is that the opposite view (that Hobbes was wrong) has been so thoroughly documented that not much new could be added. Only by adopting a "charitable" view of Hobbes, and a critical view of his opponents, could they make a significant new contribution. In other words, they wanted to make a splash, not a ripple.

Their bias is expressed by selective omission of information unfavorable to Hobbes. For example, in Hobbes's "Dialogus Physicus", his fallacious solution of the cube-duplication problem has been deleted, without mentioning that it was fallacious. Also, the reader is not informed that a "Torricelli apparatus" and a "mercury barometer" are functionally identical; the height of the mercury column varies with weather conditions. This variability was a problem for Hobbes, but not for Boyle. But it is not mentioned, except in connection with a suggestion that the experimentalists may have fudged their data.

Also, the authors should have noted that Hobbes's a-priori rationalist philosophy is not a viable alternative to experimentalism, because it is based on an elementary logical fallacy: you cannot make up definitions and postulates arbitrarily AND claim that deductions from them give certainty about the real world.

A good introduction to Hobbes. I doubt most people will take the time to read this book. Hobbes' works seem like the precursor to so many ideas and philosophies that I cannot believe more people are not familiar with this great political philosopher. My only problem is that Missner does not go more in-depth. Perhaps, he was given set guidelines by the editors.

A very interesting book to look at to see a picture of the elderly Hobbes in action.

It's a bit difficult to know who to recommend this book to. It's not that it's a bad book - it isn't - rather that it contains almost exactly the same arguments as Leviathan, only shorter and in less detail. Consequently they are more convincing in Leviathan than here, and I have to recommend Leviathan instead of this.

If you're unfamiliar with Hobbes, what his political argument basically boils down to is that people are naturally bad, and will all try to steal from their fellows, and kill those that displease them, and so on, meaning that in their natural state man is in a constant state of war. It is necessary then to establish the Leviathan, that is, a Sovereign, who has ultimate power unquestioned by anyone, who stops men from fighting by imposing laws with penalties for breaking them so harsh that it would be madness to not obey them. In this way order is kept.

That is the argument put forward here, and in the Leviathan, only, as I said, the Leviathan puts it better. I can only think this book would be useful to those who find the 500 odd pages of the Leviathan too daunting, and want to start with something shorter.