Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Leviathan, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, War, and Civil Society
Power, Common-wealths, and Monarchies
Religion
Fear
Reason, Fact, and Philosophy
Summary
Analysis
Discourse ends when one has either obtained (or not obtained) an object of appetite (or aversion) or given up all together. Regardless of the outcome, however, discourse cannot end “in absolute knowledge of fact,” because no one can know by discourse alone “that this, or that, is, has been, or will be.” According to Hobbes, knowledge from discourse is conditional, which is to know “that if This be, That is; if This has been, That has been; if This shall be, That shall be.”
For Hobbes, true knowledge is the product of discourse and experience and cannot be had in merely one or the other. This argument further discredits many forms of philosophy, as several philosophies (except for mathematics) are grounded in discourse—that is thought and conversation—not practice.
Themes
Verbal discourse begins with defined words, builds on connections between definitions, and ends with a conclusion. Science is the conditional knowledge drawn from such discourse, but if the discourse is not grounded in accepted definitions and the connections are not made in appropriate ways, the conclusion is merely opinion. Discourse not grounded in definitions is more about the person than the topic of the discourse. The resolution of ungrounded discourse, then, is belief and faith. Belief is vital in Christianity; yet, to believe is to believe the entire doctrine, not to trust in a single person. It is not only Christians, Hobbes says, but all sorts of people who believe in God. These people have belief and faith, too, they just don’t believe in the doctrine.
This passage is the crux of Hobbes’s religious argument. Although Hobbes believes in the existence of God, he does not believe in much of the Holy Scripture held to be the Word of God and therefore supreme truth in Christianity. For Hobbes, Holy Scripture, which was written by different people at different times in history, is conditional knowledge at best and cannot be reasonably accepted as fact or truth.
Themes
