Leviathan
What is this text?
Seed draft: Leviathan grounds political authority in fear, self-preservation, covenant, and sovereign power. Hobbes offers one of the decisive modern accounts of why individuals leave the state of nature and authorize an absolute sovereign.
Why does it matter?
Establishes the modern social contract problem of authority, consent, security, and obligation that Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Rawls, Pateman, and Mills later reshape or contest.