Leviathan Summary: Hobbes on the State of Nature and the Social Contract : Free Summarizer

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes, 1651·written 1651, during the English Civil War in the original·original at Project Gutenberg

The 30‑second versionwritten 1651, during the English Civil War → the founding text of social contract theory

Humans are equal enough to make peace impossible. "Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind" that even the weakest can kill the strongest, so no one can feel safe relying on their own strength alone.
Equality breeds competition, competition breeds war. He names three causes of quarrel built into human nature: "First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory," driving people to invade each other for gain, safety, and reputation.
Without a common power, life is 'nasty, brutish, and short.' The most quoted line in the book: in a state of war, there is "no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation... no Arts; no Letters; no Society... and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."
In that state, nothing can even be called unjust. "Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice," since justice only exists once people are bound together under one authority, not before.
The fix: everyone surrenders power to one sovereign, all at once. People must "conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men," as if every person said to every other, "I authorise and give up my Right of Governing my selfe to this Man... on this condition, that thou give up thy Right to him."
That's literally what 'Leviathan' means in the book. The united multitude that results is "the Generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather... that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God, our peace and defence."

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•Why it earns a slot

The book that invented modern social contract theory: the idea that legitimate government exists only because people agreed to trade some freedom for protection, still the starting point for every debate about the proper limits of state power.

Hobbes wrote Leviathan while England was tearing itself apart in civil war, and it shows: he argues that without a single overwhelming authority, human life collapses into a war of everyone against everyone. His solution is a social contract so total that every person surrenders their right to self-government to one sovereign, in exchange for basic safety.

This distillation is written from the freely available original, which is always the better read when you have the time: Project Gutenberg.

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Leviathan

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