Leviathan

The primary rhetorical strategy used by Hobbes in Leviathan is logos. He carefully demonstrates his logic throughout the book in order to convince the reader to accept the sovereignty of the state over a lawless life in a state of nature. In this passage, for example, he demonstrates his reasoning in a step-by-step manner as he probes the limits of an individual's submission to the state: 

If a man by the terrour of present death, be compelled to doe a fact against the Law, he is totally Excused; because no Law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation. And supposing such a Law were obligatory; yet a man would reason thus, If I doe it not, I die presently; if I doe it, I die afterwards; therefore by doing it, there is time of life gained; Nature therefore compells him to the fact [...] When a man is destitute of food, or other thing necessary for his life, he is totally Excused. 

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