It would be difficult to find a time in history more tumultuous than the period of the English Revolution and Puritan protectorate from approximately 1640 to 1660. In the midst of the tumult, many people offered prescriptions for curing the nation's disorders and achieving its long-lasting health. Hobbes's argument for the institution of an absolute sovereign in his masterpiece Leviathan is the most famous and celebrated of those prescriptions, and in this book I will be undertaking an extensive examination of Hobbes's political theory based primarily on his statement of it in Leviathan and supported by many of his political and philosophical writings.

However, my concerns go beyond mere analysis of the Hobbesian political position. In recent years, philosophers and historians have displayed considerable interest in social contract theories. But there has been confusion and controversy over the structure and justificational force of social contract arguments, as well as a good deal of perplexity over the nature of the argument used by Hobbes to establish the institution of the sovereign.