Leviathan Paperback Wordsworth Classics of World Literature By (author) Thomas Hobbes Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd Format: Paperback | 592 pages Dimensions: 129mm x 198mm x 15mm | 402g Publication date: 14 July 2014 Publication City/Country: Herts ISBN 10: 1840227338 ISBN 13: 9781840227338 Product de*ion With an Introduction by Dr Richard Serjeantson, Trinity College, Cambridge Since its first publication in 1651, Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan has been recognised as one of the most compelling, and most controversial, works of political philosophy written in English. Forged in the crucible of the civil and religious warfare of the mid-seventeenth century, it proposes a political theory that combines an unequivocal commitment to natural human liberty with the conviction that the sovereign power of government must be exercised absolutely. Leviathan begins from some shockingly naturalistic starting-points: an analysis of
Benedict de Spinoza lived a life of blameless simplicity as alens-grinder in Holland. And yet in his lifetime, he was expelledfrom the Jewish community in Amsterdam as a heretic, and after hisdeath his words were first banned by the Christian authorities asatheistic, then hailed by humanists as the gospel of Pantheism. His"Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order" shows us the realitybehind this enigmatic figure. First published by his friends afterhis premature death at the age of 44, the "Ethics" uses the methodsof Euclid to describe a single entity, properly called both "God"and "Nature", of which mind and matter are two manifestations. Fromthis follow, in ways that are strikingly modern, the identity ofmind and body, the necessary causation of events and actions, andthe illusory nature of free will.
Renaissance man, Elizabethan philsopher, and scholar RobertFludd sought to integrate the whole of human knowledge within adivine and hierarchically ordered cosmology. After completing hiseducation at Oxford University, he journeyed throughout Europeseeking the knowledge of mystics, scientists, musicians,physicians, and alchemists, leading to the publication of manyhistorically influential works on science, medicine, andphilosophy.
