Penguin Classics: Leviathan

Introduction by Christopher Brooke

Thomas Hobbes had lived through the Thirty Years War and Britain's civil wars and the horror of what he saw provoked him into thinking in a quite new way - in a world with no safety, with no values beyond violence and greed, how could mankind rescue itself? What form of politics would provide the security which he and his contempories craved?

Vilified and scorned from the moment it was published, Leviathan was publicly burnt for sedition, but ever since it has exercised a unique fascination on its readers - both for its ideas and for its remarkable prose. Its concepts dragged Europe into a new world - one which we still live in today.