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Les Elements du droit naturel et politique sont la premiere oeuvre politique de Hobbes. Ecrits en 1640, ils circulerent en manuscrit, juste avant que Hobbes ne rejoigne la France ou il demeurera en exil pendant onze ans pour echapper aux affres de la guerre civile anglaise. La redaction de cet ouvrage est donc directement liee au contexte politique. Pourtant, Hobbes y accomplit une deterritorialisation radicale du politique. Loin de partir comme tous ses predecesseurs de l'histoire ou de la nature, il arrache le politique a l'une et a l'autre pour l'enraciner dans une theorie de la nature humaine. On a sans doute de la peine a mesurer la revolution que constitue une telle decision. Sans doute Hobbes a-t-il pour but d'eclairer ses concitoyens sur les veritables regles qui regissent l'artifice politique et sans lesquelles le corps politique s'ecroule comme un chateau de cartes dans la guerre civile, mais pour y parvenir il faut fonder la politique comme science. Il decontextualise donc le politique pour atteindre son essence et sa verite. C'est la l'audace extreme de cette philosophie a laquelle sont aveugles ceux qui entendent la lire comme s'il s'agissait d'un ecrit de circonstance dont le sens serait entierement reductible au moment de sa redaction. Le present volume comporte la premiere edition critique de ce texte depuis l'edition Tonnies, laquelle se trouve, sur bien des points, corrigee ici. La traduction est en effet fondee sur un etablissement du texte a partir de l'ensemble des manuscrits que nous connaissons. Le texte de base est fourni par le manuscrit qui comporte des corrections autographes de Hobbes. On trouvera aussi des annotations textuelles, historiques et philosophiques qui eclairent la lecture.

Die vorliegende Neuübersetzung konstituiert unter Heranziehung sämtlicher Ausgaben sowie der einschlägigen Manuskripte und anderer zeitgenössischer Textquellen für jeden einzelnen Textabschnitt textkritisch die jeweils maßgebliche Fassung letzter Hand, welche der Übersetzung zugrunde gelegt wird. In seiner Einleitung zeichnet der Herausgeber erstmals anhand zeitgenössischer Dokumente ein zuverlässiges Bild von der komplizierten Entstehungsgeschichte des Werkes. Alle inhaltlich bedeutsamen Textvarianten sind im textkritischen Apparat übersetzt. In diesem Apparat werden zusätzlich Anspielungen auf antike oder zeitgenössische Werke entschlüsselt sowie gegebenenfalls Realerklärungen geboten.

To read Hobbes on his own terms is to discover a provocative rival to contemporary perspectives on morals and politics, one that challenges widely shared assumptions about the roots of our rights and calls into question common conclusions about the scope of political authority in a society based on the consent of the governed. At the same time, it is to encounter a complement to contemporary perspectives on the liberal state, one that offers a distinctive and powerful basis for the political order that conforms to reason and secures the conditions under which human beings with differing conceptions of the best life can pursue happiness as they each understand it.

Thomas Hobbes took a new look at the ways in which society should function, and he ended up formulating the concept of political science. His crowning achievement, Leviathan, remains among the greatest works in the history of ideas. Written during a moment in English history when the political and social structures as well as methods of science were in flux and open to interpretation, Leviathan played an essential role in the development of the modern world. This edition of Hobbes' landmark work is based on the original text. It incorporates the author's own corrections and retains the period spelling and punctuation, offering both flavorful authenticity and the utmost clarity of expression

Le Leviathan, en langue latine, qui se trouve ici traduit pour la premiere fois dans son integralite en francais, n'a vu le jour qu'en 1668, mais son contenu ne se reduit aucunement a la version anglaise publiee 17 ans auparavant. Au lieu de constituer une transposition fidele du texte de 1651, ce deuxieme Leviathan doit etre tenu, de plein droit, comme un autre Leviathan. La connaissance achevee de la philosophie politique de Hobbes exige ainsi de ne pas laisser ce texte latin dans l'ombre du texte anglais. En effet, apres les critiques d'atheisme et d'opportunisme qui lui furent adressees, ce nouvel ouvrage premunit Hobbes contre toute accusation d'heresie, en dotant d'une fonction doctrinale essentielle le refus de subordonner le pouvoir politique au pouvoir ecclesiastique. Le Leviathan latin a ainsi pour originalite l'accentuation de la dimension theologico-politique de son enseignement moral et politique, d'ou le caractere indispensable de ce texte pour la connaissance de l'oeuvre de Hobbes.

De Cive ("On the citizen") is one of Thomas Hobbes's major works. "The book was published originally in Latin from Paris in 1642, followed by two further Latin editions in 1647 from Amsterdam. The English translation of the work made its first appearance four years later (London 1651) under the title 'Philosophicall rudiments concerning government and society'."The work anticipates themes of the better-known Leviathan. The famous phrase bellum omnium contra omnes ("war of all against all") appeared first in De Cive.

Leviathan is both a magnificent literary achievement and the greatest work of political philosophy in the English language. Permanently challenging, it has found new applications and new refutations in every generation. This new edition reproduces the first printed text, retaining the originalpunctuation but modernizing the spelling. It offers exceptionally thorough and useful annotation, an introduction that guides the reader through the complexities of Hobbes's arguments, and a substantial index.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory. He also contributed to a diverse array of fields, including history, geometry, physics of gases, theology, ethics, general philosophy, and political science. He was one of the main philosophers who founded materialism. He visited Florence in 1636 and later was a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne. Hobbes's first area of study was an interest in the physical doctrine of motion and physical momentum. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics. He built a good reputation in philosophic circles and in 1645, he was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and others, to referee the controversy between John Pell and Longomontanus over the problem of squaring the circle. His other works include: The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) and De Cive (The Citizen): Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (1651).

L'oeuvre de Hobbes met en place des concepts qui ouvrent l'espace dans lequel la philosophie politique moderne va s'etablir. Non qu'elle ait fait autour d'elle l'unanimite, bien au contraire, mais parce que son point de depart dans l'individu, la determination du desir comme conatus, la theorie de l'etat de nature, la construction rationnelle du concept de droit subjectif, la theorie institutionnelle de l'Etat et la mise en oeuvre d'une interpretation theologico-politique de l'Ecritute sainte, qui constituent les moments fondamentaux du deploiement de sa doctrine, instaurent un champ theorique qu'aucune philosophie politique ne pourra desormais ignorer. Y. C. Zarka La decision metaphysique de Hobbes, p.11.

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan is the greatest work of political philosophy in English and the first great work of philosophy in English. In addition, it presents the fundamentals of his beliefs about language, epistemology, and an extensive treatment of revealed religion and its relation to politics. Beginning with premises that were sometimes controversial, such as that every human action is caused by the agent's desire for his own good, Hobbes derived shocking conclusions, such as that the civil government enjoys absolute control over its citizens and that the sovereign has the right to determine which religion is to be practiced in a commonwealth. Hobbes's contemporaries recognized the power of the arguments in Leviathan and many of them wrote responses to it. Selections from books by John Bramhall, Robert Filmer, Edward Hyde, George Lawson, William Lucy, Samuel Pufendorf and Thomas Tenison are included in this edition. Leviathan is divided into four parts: In the first part, Of Man, Hobbes presents a view of human beings and of the natural world in general that is materialistic and mechanistic. In the second part, Of Commonwealth, he defends the theory of absolute sovereignty, the view that the government has all the political power and has the right to control any aspect of life. In the third part, Of a Christian Commonwealth, he critiques concepts like revelation, prophets, and miracles in such a way that it becomes doubtful whether they can be rationally justified. In the fourth part, Of the Kingdom of Darkness, he explains various ways in which priestly religion has corrupted religion and transgressed the rights of the sovereign. In this revised edition of Hobbes's classic work, A.P. Martinich improves Hobbes's punctuation for the sake of clarity. He has also added new notes for readers, extensive cross references, and substantial part of Hobbes's reply to Bramhall's The Catching of Leviathan