Léviathan

Comment accorder la multitude et sortir de l'état de «guerre de tous contre tous»? Par quels moyens des individus aux profils et aux désirs variés - pour ne pas dire rivaux - peuvent-ils vivre ensemble et vivre bien? Au lendemain d'une guerre civile qui a déchiré l'Angleterre, le Léviathan (1651) offre une réponse novatrice et déroutante pour ses contemporains : il revient aux particuliers de conclure un pacte fondateur, qui confère au souverain l'autorité de les représenter absolument et de faire la loi en leur nom. Par la puissance et la cohérence de son raisonnement, le Léviathan a redéfini les droits et les devoirs des souverains et des citoyens. Revenir à lui aujourd'hui, c'est éclairer nos propres conditions de pensée et de pratique politique. Cette édition regroupe les chapitres X à XVI (De l'homme), consacrés à la problématique morale, ainsi que les chapitres XVII, XVIII et XXI (De la République), dédiés au pouvoir politique et à la liberté des sujets. Dossier : Petit précis de philosophie politique : Aristote, Locke, Rousseau, Hannah Arendt, Pierre Clastres, Pierre Manent.Biographie de l'auteurThomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was born in Malmesbury. Entering Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1603, he took his degree in 1608 and became tutor to the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick, afterwards the Earl of Devonshire; his connection with this family was life-long. His first interest was in the classics, and his first published work a translation of Thucydides, in 1628. An interest in science and philosophy soon developed, heightened by extended travels in Europe in 1629-31 and 1634-37. This led to his great project of a political science. His first verson of this,The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, was privately circulated in 1640, when Parliament was hotly disputing the king's powers, and Hobbes fled to Paris, where he stayed for eleven years.A second version,De Cive, was published in 1642, and the third,Leviathan the crowning achievement of his political science in 1651. It was so influential that it came under widespread attack and was in danger of condemnation by the House of Commons. Hobbes perforce lived quietly and published little more on political matters. At the age of eighty-four he composed an autobiography in Latin verse, and within the next three years translated the whole of Homer'sOdyssey andIliad.