Leviathan (Oxford World's Classics)

First a word about the edition that I read. It was the Oxford World's Classics paperback. It claims to have modernized the spelling. I don't know about you, but as far as I am concerned doth, hath, belongeth is not modern. It wouldn't have been very hard for them to change it to does, has and belongs. Many people complain about the way it was written, making it hard to read. I found that if you read the difficult parts aloud, as if you were giving a lecture, they are easier to understand the first time through. Definitely not for speed-readers.
Hobbes was a remarkable man. He published Leviathan when he was in his early 60's. For someone of his age he was very much in tune with the science of his day. One can only speculate that if he were to have been born 400 years later, with modern science at hand, he would have been considered the greatest philosopher of all time.
The first part of his book, "Of Man" goes about providing definitions of what must be virtually all of humankinds various behaviours and emotions. He also goes on to define what is basic human nature. It is here, without the benefit of modern science, where his philosophy, indeed the cornerstone of his philosophy, gets off on the wrong foot. Thanks to modern archaeology we know that humans are not solitary creatures by nature, but social animals.
In the second part of his book "Of Commonwealth" he spells out why we form commonwealths, and how a commonwealth should run. Again he is very thorough in looking at all aspects of a government and what it needs to do. He defines the power of the sovereign, the making of laws, the consequences of breaking these laws, and where the sovereign gets authority to carry out the consequences. I felt that he gave the sovereign far too much power, and he is there, it would seem, for life. The people only make covenants between themselves that this person or peoples are to be sovereign. Once a sovereign is declared, there is no covenant, or constitution, between the people and the sovereign; the sovereign is given Carte Blanche powers. One must remember that this book was written while Hobbes was in "exile" in Paris during the English civil war and the subsequent government of Cromwell. And while he is careful to call the sovereign "a person or assembly of people" it is quite obvious that he prefers the singular.
The third part of the book "Of a Christian Commonwealth" was for a large part just skimmed over by me. Some people suggest that Hobbes, because of some of the things he says in the first half of the book, was really an atheist. They say that he wrote this to fool the church to thinking otherwise of him. After skimming through this part I feel that Hobbes was more likely a reformer, someone who definitely believed in God but didn't agree with the way the church and the Pope were behaving back then. I myself am an atheist and cannot imagine writing so copiously on a subject that I do not believe in, never mind doing all of the Biblical research that Hobbes must have.
The fourth part, and the conclusion really don't have much to say. He is busy blasting the Pope, the Catholic Church and Aristotle.
All in all some good philosophical points. His definitions of free will and spirit I think should be more widely taught. The fact that this edition could have been modernized a bit more, as well as the last half of the book being pretty useless today, leads me to give it three stars.

It's a classic.