Leviathan

or The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil

By: Thomas Hobbes

Narrated by: James Adams

The leviathan is the vast unity of the State. But how are unity, peace, and security to be attained? Hobbes’ answer is sovereignty, but the resurgence of interest today in Leviathan is due less to its answers than its methods: Hobbes sees politics as a science capable of the same axiomatic approach as geometry.

Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan was, in Hobbes’ lifetime, publicly burnt and even condemned in Parliament as one of the causes of the Great Fire of London in 1666. Its current appeal lies not just in its elevation of politics to a science, but in its overriding concern for peace, its systematic analysis of power, and its convincing apologia for the then-emergent market society in which we still live.

Public Domain (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Leviathan is a remarkable attempt to explain and justify the institution of government, and it remains one of the masterpieces of political thought.” ( Masterpieces of World Literature)

Gotta love that 1600s saltiness

I love how he spends half the book talking through the Bible at length just for the point of showing Catholics are ridiculous and divine right is total b.s.

Keep the bible near at hand...

the narrator did a good job...bravo!

A word of advice : brush up on your bible before listening.. If you have the time, reread it...and i mean all the bible : old and new testament. It will be very useful, especially for Part 2 and 3...

a true classic everyone should read and study

if without succinctness Thomas Hobbes sometimes clearly sometimes roughly frames historical questions at the heart of life and society that in 2025 when I write this we are still struggling to articulate an answer. this is a tremendously important document both representing thought and commentary and being a retrospective attempt to understand where we are and how we got here. in some ways however imperfect Thomas Hobbes does a better job of describing where the world is in 2025 then anyone, and that is very strange. it is hard to contemplate how his mind could have framed so many important issues given his historical locus, and one can only Wonder if such a sharp mind could have been alive in 2025 to comment what such a mind would say and say about strange document that we must study forever.

Naturalist Musings

This is a book that us wildly misunderstood by those who skim or only reas short summaries. Much of what is discussed is about how to avoid collapsing into chaos, the skeleton of which the Enlightenment era was later built. A foundational text for political philosophy. Definitely a very mentally stimulating book. The reader is clear and easy to understand.

Omg this was boring

I loved the parts about political philosophy but towards the end it literally felt like he was just quoting the Bible for 5 hours.