LeviathanBy: Thomas Hobbes 'The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short' Written during the chaos of the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan asks how, in a world of violence and horror, can we stop ourselves from descending into anarchy? Hobbes' case for a 'common wealth' under a powerful sovereign or 'Leviathan' to enforce security and the rule of law, shocked his contemporaries, and his book was publicly burnt for sedition the moment