Hobbes's argument that, to escape a violent 'state of nature,' people surrender power to a sovereign through a social contract. It is a cornerstone of modern political philosophy.
Sources for Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes — Leviathan in Governance & Society
Held in the Governance & Society chamber of the Babel Nexus Index.
- Aristotle — Politics (−350)
- Cicero — De Re Publica (On the Commonwealth) (−54)
- Cicero — De Legibus (On the Laws) (−52)
- Kautilya — Arthashastra (−300)
- Machiavelli — The Prince (1532)
- Plato — The Republic (−380)
- John Locke — Two Treatises of Government (1689)
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau — The Social Contract (1762)
- Thomas Paine — Common Sense (1776)
- Thomas Paine — Rights of Man (1791)
- Alexis de Tocqueville — Democracy in America (1835)
- John Stuart Mill — On Liberty (1859)