Gateway to the Social Contract: Selections from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, John Locke's Second Treastise on Government, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract

by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke

Gateway to the Social Contract brings together a selection of writings from political theorists Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau exploring questions of political legitimacy and authority. With ideas ranging from authoritarian to anarchic, these authors continue to offer compelling insights into contemporary problems.

Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 4, 2028

About the author

Thomas Hobbes was a British philosopher and a seminal thinker of modern political philosophy. His ideas were marked by a mechanistic materialist foundation, a characterization of human nature based on greed and fear of death, and support for an absolute monarchical form of government. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.

He was also a scholar of classical Greek history and literature, and produced English translation of Illiad, Odyssey and History of Peloponnesian War.