Tom Sorell and Luc Foisneau present a volume of brand-new new essays which reconsider the significance of Thomas Hobbes's masterpiece after three and a half centuries. The world's leading Hobbes scholars and a few newcomers develop themes that have not received sufficient attention in previous work on Leviathan the place of the last of Hobbes's treatises in the scheme of Hobbes's political writings; Leviathan's claims about some of the passions with the greatest effects on politics; and the connections between biblical and political authorities. This is a book that anyone working on Hobbes and this period of intellectual history will want to read.

• Introduction


• Part One: Leviathan among Hobbes's Political Writings


• 1: Karl Schuhmann: Leviathan and De cive


• 2: Kinch Hoekstra: Hobbes De Facto? 'A Review and Conclusion'


• 3: Ted H. Miller: The Uniqueness of Leviathan: Authorizing Poets, Philosophers, and Sovereigns


• 4: Luc Foisneau: Leviathan's Theory of Justice


• Part Two: Passion and Politics


• 5: Richard Tuck: The Utopianism of Leviathan


• 6: Quentin Skinner: Hobbes and the Classical Theory of Laughter


• 7: Yves-Charles Zarka: The Political Subject


• 8: Tom Sorell: The Burdensome Freedom of Sovereigns


• Part Three: Biblical and Political Authority


• 9: Edwin Curley: The Covenant with God in Hobbes's Leviathan


• 10: A. P. Martinich: The Interpretation of Covenants in Leviathan


• 11: Noel Malcolm: Leviathan, the Pentateuch, and the Origins of Modern Biblical Criticism


• 12: Franck Lessay: Hobbes's Protestantism