How long does it take to read Leviathan?
Or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes takes about 9 hours 19 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 19 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1651. 508 pages, about 139,700 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 31 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 19 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 49 minutes |
The page count is the median across 99 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, from 1651, is one of the first and most influential arguments towards social contract. Written in the midst of the English Civil War, it concerns the structure of government and society and argues for strong central governance and the rule of an absolute sovereign as the way to avoid civil war and chaos.
Subjects: Political science, The State, Sciences politiques, État, Nonfiction, Politics
