17.12.2025 - Part One: The Title
21.01.2026 - Part Two: The Frontispiece
Thomas Hobbes wrote his masterpiece of political philosophy, Leviathan (1651), during a turbulent age of civil war, when the Reformation was succeeded by the Enlightenment. The seventeenth century witnessed profound changes in the relationship between church and state, when the old division of authority between the Two Kingdoms of Pope and Emperor was overturned by what Johann Sommerville called an "Erastian revolution," one that permanently subordinated the church to the state and granted a monopoly of power to the secular ruler. This revolution is graphically depicted on the famous frontispiece of Hobbes's book, where the colossus he named after a biblical sea monster, identified with the Devil or Egyptian Pharaoh, represents the body politic and holds both the civil sword and the ecclesiastical scepter.
In this two-part lecture series, Prof. Dr. Robert Yelle explains the meaning of the name "Leviathan" and of the juxtaposed symbols of temporal and spiritual authority on the frontispiece. These were clues to Hobbes's more radical arguments against any separation between religion and politics, arguments that he derived from the biblical tradition and from ancient Greek skepticism.