ABSTRACT
A spectre haunts Leviathan, one of the foremost works of political philosophy. The spectre takes the form of political breakdown, and the chaos that follows from it. And the emotion pervading the pages of Leviathan, which this vision of chaos evokes, is terror. In the most famous passage in Leviathan, Hobbes graphically expressed this dread of violent turmoil. Hobbes is discussing what life is like in the state of nature, when human beings lack effective government. Religion has come to the fore again politically, despite having been dismissed as outmoded by so many modern secular and progressive political and moral creeds. This is not just because of the confrontation between the secular 'West' and the Islamic world, which looms so large in modern international politics. This is not exclusively because Western countries have absorbed significant numbers of Muslim immigrants. In many occidental societies such as Italy and the USA, religion remains politically potent among the population.
