Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan imagined a commonwealth dominated by a notoriously powerful sovereign and populated by good citizens desperate to escape a life that was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbesian Commonwealth, Michael Byron ’86 interprets what it means to be a good Hobbesian subject, emphasizing the concepts of subjection and submission. Byron is a professor of philosophy at Kent State University.