From the turmoil of the English Civil War, when life was truly nasty, brutish, ahd short, Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) speaks directly to the twentieth century. In its over-riding concern for peace, its systematic analysis of power and its elevation of politics to the status of a science, it mirrors much modern thinking. And despite its contemporary notoriety - Pepys called it 'a book the Bishops will not let be printed again it was also, as Dr Macpherson shows, a convincing apologia for the emergent seventeenth-century market society.
Pelican Classics
The Pelican Classics is a series of the most influential books in philosophy, religion, science, history, politics and economics. These new editions have been prepared for a modern audience, and each work is prefaced by a critical -introduction which assesses its significance for its contemporaries, its effect on succeeding generations, and its relevance today.
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