Leviathan

Many individuals who have never read Leviathan or even heard of Thomas Hobbes nevertheless know the adjective “Hobbesian.” Aside from its general definition of pertaining to the work of Hobbes, Hobbesian refers to the state of humankind defined by selfishness and unending violence perpetrated against one another—or in Hobbes’s words, a life that is “solitary, poor, nasty, and short” (76).

Yet despite interpretations of Hobbes as being a writer of supreme pessimism, this condition of “war of every man against every man” (78) exists largely as a hypothetical precept on which Hobbes bases his theory of sovereignty and commonwealths. In short, with no central authority that possesses both the ability to pass laws and the strength to awe subjects into obeying them, there will no checks whatsoever on human liberty. And while liberty—at least in the context of Enlightenment philosophy and the doctrines on which America was founded—is thought to be an unalloyed good, Hobbes considers liberty as the sum of all human urges and passions, including the compulsion to rape, murder, and steal.

Only upon accepting this precept of an inherently violent state of nature can a reader be persuaded to accept Hobbes’s somewhat severe philosophy of governance.