J.P.Sommerville

Hobbes on the state of nature and the nature of the state.

Suggested reading

General

Brown, K.C., ed., Hobbes Studies, Oxford 1965.
[Excellent collection of essays.]

Cranston, M., and Peters, R., Hobbes and Rousseau: a collection of critical essays, New York 1972.
[Useful essays on various aspects of Hobbes' thought.]

Descartes, René, Discourse on method and Meditations
[Also available in many printed editions. Background to Hobbes' scientific ideas and geometrical approach.]

Hobbes, Thomas, De Cive,  (printed Latin and English versions, Oxford 1983)

Hobbes, Thomas, The Elements of Law,  (printed version: London 1889, reprinted 1969)
[Highly important earlier versions of Hobbes' theory.]

Montaigne, Michel de, Essays, especially the Apology for Raimond Sebond (ii.12).
[Classic of Renaissance skepticism.]

Rogow, Arnold, Thomas Hobbes: radical in the service of reaction, New  York 1986.
[Biography.]

Sommerville, Johann P., Thomas Hobbes: political ideas in historical context, London/ New York 1992.

Sorell, Tom, Hobbes, London 1986.
[Brief introduction.]

Sorell, Tom and Foisneau, Luc (eds), Leviathan after 350 years, Oxford University Press 2004.

Tuck, Richard, Hobbes, Oxford 1989.
[Good short introduction.]

Tuck, Richard, "Hobbes and Descartes," in G.A.J. Rogers and Alan Ryan, eds., Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, Oxford 1988, 11-41.
[Proffers the thesis that Hobbes is replying to Descartes.]

Tuck, Richard, 'The "modern" theory of natural law', in Anthony Pagden,ed., The languages of political theory in early-modern Europe, Cambridge 1987.

Tuck, Richard, Natural rights theories, Cambridge 1979, and the same author's Philosophy and Government 1572-1651, 1993
[Interesting arguments on Hobbes' context.]

Watkins, J.W.N., Hobbes's system of ideas, London 1973.
[Useful guide; good on science.]

Zagorin, Perez, "Hobbes's early philosophical development," in Journal of the History of Ideas 1993, 505-18.
[Attack on Tuck's thesis]

Hobbes' political thought

Bobbio, Norberto, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition, Chicago 1993.

 Collins, Jeffrey R, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, Oxford University Press, 2005
[On Hobbes political and religious allegiances after Leviathan.]

Gauthier, David, The logic of Leviathan, Oxford 1969.
[Games-theoretical approach.]

Hampton, Jean, Hobbes and the social contract tradition, Cambridge1986.
[Approach similar to Gauthier's but reaches very different conclusions.]

Hobbes, Thomas, Behemoth, (printed version London 1889; reprinted with new introduction 1969, 1990.)
[Important on historical context.]

Johnston, David, The rhetoric of Leviathan, Princeton 1986.
[Well-argued book.]

Laird, John, Hobbes, London 1934.
[Much information on Hobbes, his precursors, and his contemporaries.]

Malcolm, Noel, Aspects of Hobbes, Oxford University Press, 2002

Mill, David van, Liberty, rationality, and agency in Hobbes’s Leviathan, Albany : State University of New York Press, 2001

Oakeshott, Michael, Hobbes on civil association, Oxford 1975.
[Influential account.]

Scattola, Merio,  "Taming the leviathan, reading Hobbes in seventeenth-century Europe" in Early modern natural law theories : contexts and strategies in the early Enlightenment, edited by T.J. Hochstrasser and P. Schröder, Dordrecht 2003

Skinner, Quentin, 'The context of Hobbes's theory of political obligation', in Maurice Cranston and Richard Peters, eds., Hobbes and Rousseau, New York 1972, 109-42.
[Very influential article.]

Skinner, Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, 1996.
[Long, detailed, and important, though not centrally on Hobbes' political thought.]

Skinner, Quentin, 'Thomas Hobbes on the proper signification of liberty', in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 40(1990), 121-51.

State, Stephen A., 'Text and context: Skinner, Hobbes, and theistic natural law', in Historical Journal 28(1985).

Sullivan, Vickie B., Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England, Cambridge University Press, 2004
[Interesting recent argument by an historically sensitive political scientist.]

Warrender, Howard, The political philosophy of Hobbes: his theory of obligation, Oxford 1975.
[Important book.]