Hobbes’s Leviathan. The Destruction of the State, Christ and the Crocodile’s Belly
Abstract
This article addresses the question of why Thomas Hobbes named his 1651 philosophical magnum opus, Leviathan, after the Biblical monster. Depicting the state in this fashion alludes to a contemporaneous interpretation of Leviathan as a crocodile, an animal that could represent the Devil. Hobbes has been considered an atheist or deist who was acutely aware of the political power of images. Constructing metaphors and similes likening Christianity to something that is swallowed, and the state to a crocodile, Hobbes esoterically expressed his disagreement with the Christian religion. This illustrated his belief that the Christian doctrine was destructive to the state and inferior to pagan empires in its capacity to induce law-abiding behaviour among citizens.
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