Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Leviathan is the greatest, perhaps the sole, masterpiece of political philosophy written in the English language. And the history of our civilization can provide only a few works of similar scope and achievement to set beside it. Consequently, it must be judged by none but the highest standards and must be considered only in the widest context. The masterpiece supplies a standard and a context for the second-rate, which indeed is but a gloss; but the context of the masterpiece itself, the setting in which its meaning is revealed, can in the nature of things be nothing narrower than the history of political philosophy.

(Michael Oakeshott, "Introduction to Leviathan," in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, new and expanded ed. [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991], 221-94, at 223 [essay first published in 1946])

Note from KBJ: Here is Jonathan Bennett's "translation" of Leviathan into modern English. What do you think of Bennett's project? Is he dumbing down these great texts, or is he making them accessible to a greater number of people? He could be doing both, of course.