Philosophy and Literature

A transitional text in other respects as well, De Cive differs from Hobbes's earlier Elements of Law and later Leviathan by claiming points of agreement between his own political philosophy and that embodied allegorically in the fables of classical antiquity (as explicated by himself). Though he did not begin with and subsequently abandoned this unconvincing approach, it reveals how late in his intellectual development he was still tempted to find some way of establishing classical precedents for his views, and thereby calls into question his frequent assessment as an arch-modern.