LEVIATHAN by Thomas Hobbes, Al P. Martinich (Editor) ( 9781554810031 )

Item Details

Title:

LEVIATHAN

By:

Format:

Paperback

List price:	£22.25
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ISBN 10:

1554810035

ISBN 13:

9781554810031

Publisher:

BROADVIEW PRESS LTD

Pub. date:

23 December, 2010

Edition:

2nd Revised edition

Series:

Broadview Editions

Pages:

696

Description:

Hobbes' classic work has set the tone for the course of political philosophy through to our own day. This edition includes the full text of the 1651 edition, together with a wide variety of background documents that help set the work in context. It also includes are an introduction, explanatory notes, and a chronology.

Synopsis:

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. In addition, it presents the fundamentals of his beliefs about language, epistemology, and an extensive treatment of revealed religion and its relation to politics. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent's desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes's contemporaries recognized the power of the arguments in Leviathan and many of them wrote responses to it. Selections from books by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. Leviathan is divided into four parts: In the first part, Of Man, Hobbes presents a view of human beings and of the natural world in general that is materialistic and mechanistic.In the second part, Of Commonwealth, he defends the theory of absolute sovereignty, the view that the government has all the political power and has the right to control any aspect of life. In the third part, Of a Christian Commonwealth, he critiques concepts like revelation, prophets, and miracles in such a way that it becomes doubtful whether they can be rationally justified. In the fourth part, Of the Kingdom of Darkness, he explains various ways in which priestly religion has corrupted religion and transgressed the rights of the sovereign. In this revised edition of Hobbes's classic work, A.P. Martinich improves Hobbes's punctuation for the sake of clarity. He has also added new notes for readers, extensive cross references, and substantial part of Hobbes's reply to Bramhall's The Catching of Leviathan.

Publication:

Canada

Imprint:

Broadview Press Ltd

Returns:

Returnable

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