First Dutch edition of the seminal work by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), one of the most original political philosophers of his era. Written during his exile in Paris amidst the English Civil War (1642-1651), Leviathan presents the state as a vast artificial monster composed of individual men, whose authority is necessary to protect citizens from the natural state of war. Hobbes argued that survival, property, and power drive human behaviour, making submission to a strong sovereign preferable to the chaos of anarchy.
The present Dutch translation was made by Abraham van Berkel (1630-1688), who was closely associated with the Dutch freethinking circles around Spinoza. For this translation, van Berkel wrote an important preface explicitly stating the political aims of publishing his Dutch Leviathan at that particular moment in Dutch history. A close reading of the Dutch text reveals several telling deviations from the English original, one of which may represent a deliberate reinterpretation of Hobbes meaning, presumably intended to adapt Hobbesian ideas more effectively to a Dutch context.
With 2 stamps of the Breslau library on the verso of the title page, and a later pencil annotation on p. 722. The boards are rubbed, the spine is worn, with a tear and loss of material at the head. The leaves are somewhat browned and foxed. Graesse III, 311 u; Knuttel, Verboden Boeken, 185; STCN 095379150 (4 copies); USTC 1808932 (5 copies); cf. PMM 138 (English ed.).