As Pleasantly as the Human Condition Will Allow

Thomas Hobbes is famous for his bleak world view. Yet, in a lesser discussed work, De Cive, Hobbes implores the sovereign that it ought to seek the happiness of the citizens. I seek to understand the concepts of duty and civic happiness as they appear in De Cive and only in De Cive among Hobbes' works, as well as to understand why this train is shed in the move to Leviathan. Ultimately, I conclude that civic happiness, for Hobbes, is a way of eliminating the threat poseed to the sovereign by the great, and that Leviathan does not discuss the concept because its focus has shifted away from the threat of the great and towards that of popular opinion.