By Razie Mah

Modernism belongs to the Age of Ideas. The Age of Ideas starts in the 17th century. It recedes in the 21st. Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) elevates sense-based impressions and sensible thought, as the only way to arrive at correct definitions. Correct words produce understanding. Thomas Hobbes builds models of the subject and of the commonwealth based on natural civil laws. He then defends his model against the work of contemporaries. Hobbes’ description foreshadows the modern concepts of the citizen and the civil state. He is a prophet for the modern totalitarian state. My comments differ from modernist commentaries, which try to identify where Hobbes goes wrong, his system of thought, and so on. Instead, I show that Hobbes’ models of speech and power are relational structures.