ABSTRACT
Leviathan was written at great speed. Hobbes churned out its 250,000-odd words in under a year. As a result, he sometimes expresses himself less scrupulously, and in less rigorously argued ways, than is the norm not just in modern analytical philosophy, but in many of Hobbes other works. Hobbes was a materialist, and readily talks in Leviathan of 'politic bodies' in a calculated analogy with material bodies. He saw the philosophy of Aristotle and his followers, for which Hobbes uses the derogatory term 'Aristotelity', as an abdication of reason. Hobbes thinks that words matter because political conflict, which is both symptom and cause of the failure of political authority, arises directly from conflicts of beliefs. He addresses the human sciences in the opening chapters of Leviathan. His main aim is the negative one of showing how human psychology and cognition make people blunder in their thinking about questions of science, or politics and morality.
