Leviathan

The scandal that first attracted attention when Leviathan first appeared in 1651 was the book's advocacy of an unequivocal materialism with its implication of atheism. Another controversy surrounded its total rejection of the traditional justification for the exercise of political power, namely, the authority of kingship ordained by a deity. Third, in its apparently self-centered hedonism, it was seen as rejecting all traditional ethical codes. In this collection of contemporary responses to Leviathan, attention is focused on its critics -- Hobbes had virtually no defenders -- who attacked his moral, political, and religious ideas in a blistering series of pamphlets and short books and, in their criticisms, bring out powerfully the importance and originality of Hobbes's theory.