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John Hobbes Leviathan- Help needed

post #1 of 5
11/23/10 at 8:49am
Thread Starter 
I'm taking a Government class this term and part of one of my assignments this week is to read and write a summary about the first two chapters of John Hobbes Leviathan. The entire book is basically (from what I understand) his thoughts about the role of government. I may be mistaken but I believe Hobbes was a proponent of a strong central government. Has anyone read any of this work? From what I can gather the first two chapters are about natural order beginning with how objects affect our senses which allows us to progress to other states such as imagination, memory, and understanding and that how we perceive objects affects our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Does that sound right? Or am I way off base? I have a hard time reading things written in the 1600s and 1700s because I find it so tedious.
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post #2 of 5
11/23/10 at 11:22am
Thread Starter 
My bad. The author is Thomas Hobbes, not John.
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post #3 of 5
11/24/10 at 5:58pm
I've had to read it for my social theory class. It was in my second year though and now I'm in my fourth so it was so long ago...
Hobbes believed monarchy was the solution to government, and that it's in the nature of people to steal, kill, in order to get what they want in an easy way..And I still remember the first two chapters, they were kinda confusing, it sounded like people are all the same in terms of capacity and no one has any sort of advantage over another- this was just leading up to his argument that because we all have relatively equal capacities and no one can really ensure his security, so we all just end up fighting if there was no government there, and he provides evidence for that by saying that before there was government this is how people behaved, basically as savages.

It was all just explaining how people act when there is no government, in order to set up his argument for why we need government and later he explains why we need a strong central one. I remember being confused because it wasn't really clear where he was going with this in the first few chapters, but once you know the main argument he makes it becomes easier to understand. I can't believe I was even able to recall that!
Good luck on your summary! You can check sparknotes maybe that will help more
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post #4 of 5
11/24/10 at 6:39pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks! I beginning to wonder if anyone else had to read Hobbes. In addition to the first two chapters of Leviathan we has to read a summary of John Locke's first and second treatises on government. I have to summarize what I read in regards to Hobbes and Locke (a paragraph) for each, then compare and contrast what each meant. I already wrote the summaries. I wish the professor would have assigned a little more of Leviathan to read, but I can do that on my own to help tie things together. In some ways Locke and Hobbes are similar in that they both refer to chaos and order in nature. I do know they differ in how they perceived the role of government.

The last part of the assignment is to ask and answer a couple of questions that may popped into my head during my reading, as well as to add my own thoughts about the subject matter. This is turning into an enjoyable assignment. The term is only two weeks old and I've already learned a lot.

Thanks for the help, and I have looked on Sparknotes, as well as a few other sites for some background on the two philosophers.
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post #5 of 5
11/25/10 at 8:42am
I doubt a whole lot of people had to read it It's nice that you're reading it for government class, your class must be very thorough. In my government class which was just the required one that all majors take to graduate- Hobbes and Locke were only briefly mentioned...
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