Reading group: Hobbes, Leviathan, chapters 13–17

These five chapters of Leviathan (1651) contain the core of Hobbes's political argument.

• Ch. 13: the natural condition of mankind. Rough equality, competition, distrust and glory lead to a war of every man against every man, in which life is famously solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
• Ch. 14–15: the laws of nature. Seek peace; be willing to lay down your right to all things if others do too; keep your covenants.
• Ch. 16: persons, authors and authorisation. Easy to skip, but central.
• Ch. 17: the generation of a commonwealth, a sovereign to keep us all in awe.

I'd like us to pay attention to chapter 16. Hobbes's idea that the sovereign is "authorised" by each of us, so that his acts are in a sense ours, is the part I find hardest to accept and hardest to refute.