Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5th, 1588. Thomas passed away December 4th, 1679 at 91 years old. Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England. Hobbes attended St John's College, Cambridge where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. He also attended Magdalen Hall, Oxford.

Thomas Hobbes is known for writing in the Non-Fiction genre.

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, who is best known for his work Leviathan, in which he offered his pessimistic perspective on human nature. He believed that humanity lives very short and brutish lives and this situation can only be better by banding together and surrendering some of their freedoms to a strong political authority.

It was in 1608 that Hobbes began making some of the most critical connections that would make him into the man he would become. It was in that year that he began working for William Cavendish the statesman, even as he also worked on a range of translations of Greek texts including the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

Given his relationship with high-ranking English officials, he was a royalist during the English Civil War and had to live in exile in France to avoid his ecclesiastical, intellectual, and political enemies in England. It was while he was living in Paris that he wrote Elements of Law, his first philosophical work, which was published in 1650.

Hobbes published his magnum opus, Leviathan, in 1651. This would be the work that would have the most significant impact on political philosophy. The title of the work found inspiration in the Book of Job, which references a gigantic sea monster that he likened to the power of the state.

The work is concerned with the structure of legitimate government and society and is one of the most influential and earliest forms of the social contract. The classic work has many elements similar to another classic work The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli.

Penned during the English Civil War, the work argues that society should be ruled by an absolute sovereign who guarantees the social contract. According to Hobbes, the brute situation of humanity including civil wars could only be avoided by the presence of a strong centralized government.

Thomas Hobbes: Lists & Other Mentions

• Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil: The Telegraph: The Perfect Library Selection in 2008.

Related Authors

Fans of Thomas Hobbes also enjoy these authors:

1. Niccolò Machiavelli, author of: The Prince.
2. Plato, author of the Plato Works.
3. Karl Marx, author of: Manifesto of the Communist Party.
4. Aristotle, author of: Nicomachean Ethics.
5. Hannah Arendt, author of: Eichmann in Jerusalem.
6. Alexis de Tocqueville, author of: Democracy in America.
7. Michael J. Sandel, author of: Justice.
8. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, author of: On The Social Contract.
9. John Stuart Mill, author of: On Liberty.
10. John Locke, author of: Second Treatise of Government.

Thomas Hobbes: F.A.Q