Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiaticall and Civil (sic on spelling). 1651. Available in numerous eds., e.g. Michael Oakeshott, ed. Richard S. Peters, introd. New York: Collier; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1962.

For TH's strong suggestion "that man is a machine, like every other part of nature" (Peters 13), see esp. The First Part: Of Man, ch. 5, "Of Reason and Science" and TH's famous definition of reason as "nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting, of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts" (Oakeshott edn. 41). This part of Leviathan also contains an elegant statement of TH's rigorous and frequent denial of freedom: "And therefore if a man should talk to me of a round quadrangle . . . or of a free subject; a free will; or any free, but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say he were in error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd" (43). See in this Category of the List, R. Descartes; D. Hofstadter; J. R. Munson and R. C. York; D. S. Robinson; C. Sagan, "Life"; J. C. J. Smart; B. Spinoza; S. E. Toulmin; R. A. Watson[1]; R. S. Westfall.