Leviathan

Hobbes's masterpiece of political philosophy, published in 1651 in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Part I builds a materialist account of human beings: sensation, imagination, speech, reason as reckoning with names, and the passions, with all people driven by a restless desire for power after power. Without a common power to keep them in awe, people live in a condition of war of every one against every one, in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Reason discovers laws of nature, beginning with the command to seek peace, and the way out is a covenant in which each authorises a sovereign to act for all. Part II argues that sovereign power must be undivided and nearly absolute, though subjects keep the right to resist threats to their own lives. Parts III and IV, often skipped, interpret scripture to subordinate church to state and attack the 'kingdom of darkness'.

It is the founding work of modern social contract theory, and its question, why rational people would submit to a power above them, still structures political philosophy and game theory.