the life of man solitary poore nasty brutish and shortwritten during the chaos of the english civil war thomas hobbes leviathan asks how in a world of violence and horror can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy hobbes case for a commonwealth under a powerful sovereign or leviathan to enforce security and the rule of law shocked his contemporaries and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment it was published but his penetrating work of political philosophy now fully revised and with a new introduction for this edition opened up questions about the nature of statecraft and society that influenced governments across the world