A long argument, written during the English Civil War, asks why people should obey a government at all. Without one, Hobbes says, human life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
764 pages 14h 49m reading time
Why it lasts
A landmark of modern political philosophy, written in exile as civil war tore England apart.
Argues that without government, life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," a war of every man against every man.
Holds that to escape it, people agree to give power to an absolute ruler, a social contract that makes government legitimate.
Condemned as dangerous, it was burned by Oxford University in 1683.
Its social contract set the terms that Locke and Rousseau answered, shaping modern theories of government.
