ABSTRACT
Chapter thirteen, “Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery,” is rightfully Leviathan’s most popular, anthologized chapter. It is overtly philosophical in content and representative of a substantial part of Hobbes’s thinking. Bibliographies of writing about Hobbes reveal a striking fact: the least discussed aspect of Hobbes’s work has been the writing itself. Writing on “Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Prose,” John Carey observes that Hobbes’s writing can be exhilarating and “poetic.” The “Eloquence” of Hobbes’s work becomes apparent through the realization that he hardly invents either cultural pessimism, which is manifest in his views on human nature in the “state of nature,” or, for that matter, the political solution of absolute sovereignty and one-man rule. In seventeenth-century literature Hobbes is not alone in presenting a “vision” or “conceit” of man’s primal beginnings. He is perhaps more special in offering a post-lapsarian picture.
