20. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

‘And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.’ I’d always vaguely thought this came from Shakespeare, but in fact it appears in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, his treatise on ‘the social contract’ between rulers and ruled (Hobbes was speaking specifically about the life of man in time of war, but ‘nasty, brutish and short’ has since been taken as a summation of the human condition.) So – if this is the case, and man is in this parlous position, what is to be done? Hobbes’ answer is that social stability can only be achieved if citizens surrender themselves to the rule of an absolute monarch, who is tasked to protect the state from invasion. This is his chief duty – to preserve peace. At other times he can do more or less as he likes. This monarch Hobbes explicitly compared to the Biblical Leviathan, ‘a king over all the children of pride’ (Job 41:34), and a terrifying mixture of crocodile, sea serpent and whale. To be lorded over by such a monster was hardly ideal, though given human nature it was probably the best option available.

There was another layer of irony in the religious reference. Hobbes was reviled as an atheist throughout his life - his writings were even blamed by some clergy for the Great Plague and Fire of 1665-6 - and giving his book a Biblical title was a deliberately provocative step, the devil quoting scripture for his own ends. Just to rub it in, Hobbes named his last major work (on the Civil War) after another Biblical monster: Behemoth.

Consulted:
Hobbes, Thomas and Schuhmann, Karl (ed.): Leviathan (2003 ed.)
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2001 ed.)

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