Leviathan

Leviathan
or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill

By

3
(1 Review)
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Published:

1651

Pages:

951

ISBN:

0140431950

Downloads:

23,225

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Leviathan
or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill

By

3
(1 Review)
Leviathan was written during the English Civil war; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected: the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers.

Book Excerpt

object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter, by which it presseth our organs diversly. Neither in us that are pressed, are they anything els, but divers motions; (for motion, produceth nothing but motion.) But their apparence to us is Fancy, the same waking, that dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the Eye, makes us fancy a light; and pressing the Eare, produceth a dinne; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action, For if those Colours, and Sounds, were in the Bodies, or Objects that cause them, they could not bee severed from them, as by glasses, and in Ecchoes by reflection, wee see they are; where we know the thing we see, is in one place; the apparence, in another. And though at some certain distance, the reall, and very object seem invested with the fancy it begets in us; Yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that Sense in all cases, is nothing els but originall fancy, caused (as I h

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It takes time to adapt to the style of Hobbes but once you do it's pretty easy.The sections where he gets into the meat of the book -the social contract- is the best.This work is interesting because it reflects the strong turbulations of the time. A very famous book!