Leviathan Literary Devices

Definition of Allusion

In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals, historical events, or philosophical ideas... read full definition

In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to other literary works, famous individuals... read full definition

In literature, an allusion is an unexplained reference to someone or something outside of the text. Writers commonly allude to... read full definition

Explanation and Analysis—Imagination and Memory :

Hobbes alludes to various figures from history and mythology in his discussion of imagination and memory:

Againe, Imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by Sense, either all at once, or by parts at severall times; The former [...] is simple Imagination; as when one imagineth a man, or horse, which he hath seen before. The other is Compounded; as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaure. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person, with the image of the actions of an other man; as when a man imagins himselfe a Hercules, or an Alexander [...] it is a compound imagination, and properly but a Fiction of the mind.

Central to Hobbes’s argument in his discussion of the imagination is that the mind never truly “invents” something entirely new, but rather, it draws from experience of the natural world in order to create a picture in the mind. He anticipates an objection to his argument: that we can imagine things that do not truly exist. Here, he first alludes to the mythological figure of the centaur in order to explain that the mind has simply combined two images drawn from the natural world: horses and humans.

Next, he alludes to the mythological figure of Hercules and the historical figure of Alexander the Great. If a man has a fantasy of himself accomplishing the feats of Hercules, Hobbes suggests, then this man has again simply combined two “real” images: himself, and Hercules, as represented in art. Hobbes’s various allusions in this passage are used to underscore the inability of the mind to create something entirely new that is not found in nature.

Explanation and Analysis—In America:

In his discussion of natural life, which he characterizes as violent, uncivilized, and devoid of the higher understanding brought about by civil society, Hobbes alludes to the various peoples of the "New World"—that is, "many places of America":

It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before.

Like many other thinkers of his time, Hobbes turns to what he considers to be the “savage people” in the Americas for an example of natural life. Such peoples, he argues, have no organized government and live in a “brutish manner.” The only form of government formed by Native Americans, he assumes incorrectly, is that of “small Families” who are kept together not by rule of law or social planning but merely by what he calls “naturall lust.” Hobbes’s allusion to the indigenous peoples of the Americas underscores what he considers to be the uncivilized nature of any society that is not organized around a strong central sovereign such as a monarch.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Leviathan:

Central to the book is an allusion to the biblical figure of the Leviathan for whom the book is named. Outlining his goals in writing Leviathan, Hobbes notes:

Hitherto I have set forth the nature of Man, (whose Pride and other Passions have compelled him to submit himselfe to Government;) together with the great power of his Governour, whom I compared to Leviathan, taking that comparison out of the two last verses of the one and fortieth of Job;45 where God having set forth the great power of Leviathan, calleth him King of the Proud. There is nothing, saith he, on earth, to be compared with him. He is made so as not to be afraid. Hee seeth every high thing below him; and is King of all the children of pride.

The Leviathan is a somewhat mysterious figure in the Bible—a colossal, monstrous figure often depicted as a sea-monster. Here, Hobbes paraphrases the Bible directly, noting that the Leviathan is referred to by God as a “King of the Proud,” a figure larger than anything else “on earth.” Given the negative associations of pride in Christian thought, it is perhaps surprising that Hobbes would invoke the Leviathan as a positive model for the commonwealth or state. And yet, as Hobbes shows, the Leviathan is powerful because of its colossal size, not “afraid” of anything. This allusion, then, is important for Hobbes’s argument, as he suggests that people come together into the collective body of the state in order to avoid the terrors and perils of the natural world.

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Explanation and Analysis—Idols:

Hobbes alludes to the biblical concept of “idols” in order to describe various errors of human thought. Noting the general tendency to think of spiritual explanations for material phenomena, Hobbes writes:

But for those Idols of the brain, which represent Bodies to us, where they are not, as in a Looking-glasse, in a Dream, or to a Distempered brain waking, they are (as the Apostle saith generally of all Idols) nothing; Nothing at all, I say, there where they seem to bee; and in the brain it self, nothing but tumult, proceeding either from the action of the objects, or from the disorderly agitation of the Organs of our Sense.

In the Bible, an “idol” is an object that is mistaken for and worshiped as a God. Here, Hobbes alludes to idols in order to reflect more broadly on disordered thought. Belief in such supernatural entities as spirits or non-physical bodies is one such example, for Hobbes, of erroneous thinking, and he compares these spirits to the images we see in a “looking glass” or mirror, or the figures of a dream; they are all, he concludes, simply “nothing,” regardless of a person’s belief in them. Throughout Leviathan, Hobbes uses idolatry, the worship of false idols, as a broad category for all kinds of errors, mistakes, and superstitions.

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Explanation and Analysis—Civil War:

Toward the end of Part 4 of Leviathan, Hobbes offers a point-by-point refutation of the writings of a Catholic thinker and polemicist, Cardinal Bellarmine. In his argument for the superiority of monarchy over all other forms of government, including that of the Catholic Church, Hobbes alludes to a recent historical event that impacted his own life greatly: the English Civil War.

The other errour in this his first Argument is, that he sayes, the Members of every Common-wealth, as of a naturall Body, depend one of another: It is true, they cohære together; but they depend onely on the Soveraign, which is the Soul of the Common-wealth; which failing, the Common-wealth is dissolved into a Civill war, no one man so much as cohæring to another, for want of a common Dependance on a known Soveraign; Just as the Members of the naturall Body dissolve into Earth, for want of a Soul to hold them together.

Hobbes, who supported the losing faction (the royalists) in the English Civil War, was forced to flee to France, where he wrote Leviathan and tutored the future English King, Charles II. Here, Hobbes alludes to the recent war in order to underscore the superiority of monarchy over other systems of government. Only under a monarchy, he argues, can a nation be led by one single soul, thus providing the singular vision and coherence necessary to avoid civil war.

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Explanation and Analysis—Martyrs:

Outlining his beliefs regarding the relationship between private belief and state power, Hobbes alludes to the various martyrs who died for professing their faith in the early years of Christianity, particularly in Ancient Rome:

But what then shall we say of all those Martyrs we read of in the History of the Church, that they have needlessely cast away their lives? For answer hereunto, we are to distinguish the persons that have been for that cause put to death; whereof some have received a Calling to preach, and professe the Kingdome of Christ openly; others have had no such Calling, nor more has been required of them than their owne faith. The former sort, if they have been put to death [...] were true Martyrs; For a Martyr is, (to give the true definition of the word) a Witnesse of the Resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.

Earlier, Hobbes argued that, while a sovereign or King can never truly expect to control an individual’s beliefs, a subject must at least pretend to have accepted the beliefs dictated by their King. If, for example, a King commands a Christian to condemn his belief in Christ or God, then the Christian subject should verbally agree while nevertheless maintaining their own beliefs privately. For Hobbes, then, the various martyrs of the early church to whom he alludes here should not be thought of as great heroes; they died, he suggests, for nothing. The only true martyrs, he insists, were the apostles who witnessed Christ’s resurrection and were commanded to spread the story far and wide.

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Explanation and Analysis—Purgatory :

In his extensive critique of the various positions he regards as spiritual errors, Hobbes alludes to the Catholic belief in purgatory, a place where the dead make amends for their sins on earth prior to going to heaven:

For men being generally possessed before the time of our Saviour [...] of an opinion, that the Souls of men were substances distinct from their Bodies, and therefore that when the Body was dead, the Soule of every man [...] must subsist somewhere by vertue of its own nature [...]; the Doctors of the Church doubted a long time, what was the place, which they were to abide in, till they should be re-united to their Bodies in the Resurrection; supposing for a while, they lay under the Altars: but afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable, to build for them this place of Purgatory; which by some other Churches in this later age, has been demolished.

Hobbes, a materialist, does not believe that the soul and the body can be imagined as two separate entities. If there is a soul, he suggests, then it must be part of the body in some way. He argues that the “Doctors of the Church”—that is, theologians—have long assumed that the soul becomes separate from the body at death, and subsequently, they have debated where the soul lives prior to “the Resurrection,” with some even believing that the souls live in the church altar.

Hobbes then alludes to purgatory, suggesting that the Catholic Church invented purgatory to give these disembodied souls some place to live. Hobbes's allusion to purgatory highlights what he believes to be the absurdity of the notion that the soul can exist independent of the body.

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Explanation and Analysis—The Golden Calf:

Hobbes alludes to the biblical episode of the Golden Calf—found in the Book of Exodus—in an extensive discussion of common errors he believes have led to a general state of “spiritual darkness” across Christian Europe:

God commanded Moses to set up the Brazen Serpent; hee did not make it to himselfe; it was not therefore against the Commandement. But the making of the Golden Calfe by Aaron, and the People, as being done without authority from God, was Idolatry; not onely because they held it for God, but also because they made it for a Religious use, without warrant either from God their Soveraign, or from Moses, that was his Lieutenant.

In the Bible, the prophet Moses leaves the Israelites for 40 days to travel to Mount Sinai, where he receives from God the Ten Commandments. In his absence, however, the Israelites grow anxious, and they demand that Aaron make them a new god. Aaron melts down the Israelites’ gold and creates a golden statue of a calf, which the Israelites then worship as an idol, or a false god.

Hobbes alludes to the golden calf in order to critique what he believes to be the erroneous belief that God takes physical form in order to interfere with human affairs on earth. This belief, he suggests, is similar to the idolatrous worship of the Golden Calf, since both imagine God as a merely physical presence.

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Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan: Allusions 8 key examples