what is thomas hobbes biography

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher in the 17th century, was best known for his book 'Leviathan' (1651) and his political views on society.

(1588-1679)

Who Was Thomas Hobbes?

Thomas Hobbes was known for his views on how humans could thrive in harmony while avoiding the perils and fear of societal conflict. His experience during a time of upheaval in England influenced his thoughts, which he captured in The Elements of Law (1640); De Cive [On the Citizen] (1642) and his most famous work, Leviathan (1651). Hobbes died in 1679.

Early Years

Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, adjoining Malmesbury, England, on April 5, 1588. His father was the disgraced vicar of a local parish, and in the wake of the precipitating scandal (caused by brawling in front of his own church), he disappeared, abandoning his three children to the care of his brother. An uncle of Hobbes', a tradesman and alderman, provided for Hobbes' education. Already an excellent student of classical languages, at age 14, Hobbes went to Magdalen Hall in Oxford to study. He then left Oxford in 1608 and became the private tutor for William Cavendish, the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick (later known as the first Earl of Devonshire). In 1610, Hobbes traveled with William to France, Italy and Germany, where he met other leading scholars of the day, such as Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson.

Hobbes' pupil died in 1628, and Hobbes was left searching for a new one (always finding himself working for various wealthy and aristocratic families), Hobbes later worked for the Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a cousin of William Cavendish, and the marquess's brother, Sir Charles Cavendish. In 1631, while again tutoring a young Cavendish, Hobbes' philosophy began to take form, and his Short Tract on First Principles appeared.

Political Involvement

Through his association with the Cavendish family, Hobbes entered circles where the activities of the king, members of Parliament, and other wealthy landowners were discussed, and his intellectual abilities brought him close to power (although he never became a powerful figure himself). Through these channels, he began to observe the influence and structures of power and government. Also, the young William Cavendish was a member of Parliament (1614 and 1621), and Hobbes would have sat in on various parliamentary debates. In the late 1630s, Hobbes became linked with the royalists in disputes between the king and Parliament, as the two factions were in conflict over the scope of kingly powers, especially regarding raising money for armies.

In 1640, Hobbes wrote a piece defending King Charles I 's wide interpretation of his own rights in these matters, and royalist members of Parliament used sections of Hobbes' treatise in debates. The treatise was circulated, and The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic became Hobbes' first work of political philosophy (although he never intended it to be published as a book). The conflict then culminated in the English Civil Wars (1642-1651), which led to the king being executed and a republic being declared, and Hobbes left the country to preserve his personal safety, living in France from 1640 to 1651.

Development of Scientific Interests

Hobbes had never been trained in mathematics or the sciences at Oxford, nor previously at Wiltshire. But one branch of the Cavendish family, the Wellbecks, were scientifically and mathematically minded, and Hobbes' growing interest in these realms was stirred mainly through his association with certain family members and through various conversations he'd had and reading he'd done on the Continent. In 1629 or 1630, it is reported that Hobbes found a volume of Euclid and fell in love with geometry and Euclid's method of demonstrating theorems.

Later, he had gained enough independent knowledge to pursue research in optics, a field he would lay claim to as a pioneer. In fact, Hobbes was gaining a reputation in many fields: mathematics (especially geometry), translation (of the classics) and law. He also became well known (notorious, in fact) for his writings and disputes on religious subjects. As a member of Mersenne's circle in Paris, he was also respected as a theorist in ethics and politics.

His love of mathematics and a fascination with the properties of matter--sizes, shapes, positions, etc.--laid the foundation for his great Elements of Philosophy trilogy: De Cive (1642; "Concerning the Citizen"), De Corpore (1655; "Concerning Body") and De Homine (1658; "Concerning Man"). The trilogy was his attempt to arrange the components of natural science, psychology and politics into a hierarchy, from the most fundamental to the most specific. The works incorporated Hobbes' findings on optics and the work of, among others, Galileo (on the motions of terrestrial bodies) and Kepler (on astronomy). The science of politics discussed in De Cive was further developed in Leviathan , which is the strongest example of his writings on morality and politics, the subjects for which Hobbes is most remembered.

Development of his Political Philosophy

In Paris in 1640, Hobbes sent to Mersenne a set of comments on both Descartes ' Discourse and his Optics . Descartes saw some of the comments and sent a letter to Mersenne in response, to which Hobbes again responded. Hobbes disagreed with Descartes' theory that the mind was the primal certainty, instead using motion as the basis for his philosophy regarding nature, the mind and society. To expand the discussion, Mersenne convinced Hobbes to write a critique of Descartes' Meditationes de Prima Philosophia ("Meditations on First Philosophy"), and of course he did so. Hobbes' thoughts were listed third among the set of "Objections" appended to the work. "Replies" from Descartes then appeared in 1641. In these exchanges and elsewhere, Hobbes and Descartes regarded each other with a unique mixture of respect and disregard, and at their one personal meeting in 1648, they did not get along very well. The relationship, however, helped Hobbes develop his theories further.

In 1642, Hobbes released De Cive , his first published book of political philosophy. The book focuses more narrowly on the political (comprising sections titled "Liberty," "Empire" and "Religion") and was, as previously noted, conceived as part of a larger work ( Elements of Philosophy ). Although it was to be the third book in Elements , Hobbes wrote it first to address the particularly relevant civil unrest roiling in England at the time. Parts of the work anticipate the better-known Leviathan , which would come nine years later.

While still in Paris, Hobbes began work on what would become his magnum opus and one of the most influential books ever written: Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil (usually referred to as simply Leviathan ). Leviathan ranks high as an essential Western treatise on statecraft, on par with Machiavelli 's The Prince .

In Leviathan , written during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651), Hobbes argues for the necessity and natural evolution of the social contract, a social construct in which individuals mutually unite into political societies, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept resultant duties to protect themselves and one another from whatever might come otherwise. He also advocates rule by an absolute sovereign, saying that chaos--and other situations identified with a "state of nature" (a pre-government state in which individuals' actions are bound only by those individuals' desires and restraints)--could be averted only by a strong central government, one with the power of the biblical Leviathan (a sea creature), which would protect people from their own selfishness. He also warned of "the war of all against all" ( Bellum omnium contra omnes ), a motto that went on to greater fame and represented Hobbes' view of humanity without government.

As Hobbes lays out his thoughts on the foundation of states and legitimate government, he does it methodically: The state is created by humans, so he first describes human nature. He says that in each of us can be found a representation of general humanity and that all acts are ultimately self-serving--that in a state of nature, humans would behave completely selfishly. He concludes that humanity's natural condition is a state of perpetual war, fear and amorality, and that only government can hold a society together.

Later Years and Death

After his return to England in 1651, Hobbes continued to write. De Corpore was published in 1655, and De Homine was published in 1658, completing the Elements of Philosophy trilogy. In his later years, Hobbes turned his attention to a boyhood favorite--classics--publishing translations of Homer's The Odyssey and The Iliad .

Hugely influential, Hobbes' ideas form the building blocks of nearly all Western political thought, including the right of the individual, the importance of republican government, and the idea that acts are allowed if they are not expressly forbidden. The historical importance of his political philosophy cannot be overstated, as it went on to influence the likes of John Locke , Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant , to name a few.

Hobbes died on December 4, 1679.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Thomas Hobbes
• Birth Year: 1588
• Birth date: April 5, 1588
• Birth City: Westport, near Mamesbury, Wiltshire
• Birth Country: England
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher in the 17th century, was best known for his book 'Leviathan' (1651) and his political views on society.
• Writing and Publishing
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Education and Academia
• Politics and Government
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Death Year: 1679
• Death date: December 4, 1679
• Death City: Derbyshire
• Death Country: England

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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher who famously summarised his pessimistic view of human nature in his greatest work, Leviathan , published in 1651. Hobbes believed that the life of humanity in the state of nature is short and brutish, a situation that can be mitigated by people coming together and handing over some of their liberty to a strong political authority, which will act in their best interests.

Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 in Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England . Hobbes was "fond of the joke that his mother fell into labour with him on hearing the rumour of the Spanish Armada coming, 'so that fear and I were born twins together'" (Blackburn, 222). Although his family was not rich, Thomas did very well at school, particularly in languages and poetry. Thanks to funding from a wealthy uncle, Hobbes then studied at Magdalen College at the University of Oxford between 1602 and 1608.

Hobbes began to gather important connections when, in 1608, he started working for the statesman William Cavendish (1555-1626) as a secretary. He also had time to work on translations, notably producing an English translation of Thucydides ' Peloponnesian War in 1629. The long-term relationship with the Cavendish family continued into the 1630s when Hobbes tutored Cavendish's son William, Earl of Devonshire (1617-1684), while travelling through France and Italy on several grand tours. In between, Hobbes had also worked as a secretary for the influential courtier and author Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in the 1620s. Hobbes was certainly keen to meet influential people in person. He met the famed astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650). Hobbes' connections only became more impressive over time. By 1646, he was working as the mathematics tutor to Prince Charles, future Charles II of England (r. 1660-1685). Hobbes kept this post for three years. The prince described Hobbes as "the oddest fellow he'd ever met," which was, as the historian A. Gottlieb notes, "one of the nicest things said about Hobbes" (36).

Unsurprisingly, Hobbes was on the side of the Royalists during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651), although, for most of that decade, he was in Paris to avoid his political, intellectual, and ecclesiastical enemies in England. The British royal family was also in exile there. The turmoil and bloodshed of the Civil Wars may well have affected Hobbes' view of human nature and sovereign power. The conflict resulted in around 200,000 military and civilian deaths, which, taken as a proportion of the then population, were greater than those sustained in the First World War (1914-1918). A more personal negative influence might have been Hobbes' experience with his own father, who was defrocked as a cleric after physically attacking a fellow clergyman in a graveyard of all places.

It was during this period in exile that Hobbes wrote his first philosophical work, Elements of Law , written around 1640 but not published until 1650. Hobbes also wrote The Citizen , published in 1642; Human Nature , published in 1650; On Matter , published in 1656; and On Man , published in 1658.

Hobbes made his most lasting impact on political philosophy in his Leviathan , published in 1651. The title is a reference to the fearsome sea monster that is described in the Bible 's Book of Job , chapter 41. Hobbes is suggesting that the absolute power of the state he describes is like the great power this monster possesses. The work had a longer and more explanatory alternative title: The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civi l.

Hobbes famously took a negative view of human nature and the human condition, stating that before societies were formed, in what he described as the state of nature, "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" ( Leviathan , ch. 13). Hobbes believed that humans are driven by selfish and egoistic desires to satisfy their basic needs (e.g. food, warmth, and shelter) in order to be happy. Further, they also desire other things, such as fame, fortune, and influence. All of these must also be satisfied, even at a cost to others. For Hobbes, "men are continually in competition for honour and dignity…and consequently among men there ariseth on that ground, envy and hatred, and finally war" (quoted in Robertson, 265). For Hobbes, humanity's natural inclination is to make war. "Hobbes's pessimistic psychology, in which the dominant urge of self-preservation manifested itself basically as fear," strongly motivates his thinking in other areas (Hampson, 84).

Hobbes believed states were created in order to avoid the state of nature where there is continuous "war of every man against every man" ( Leviathan , ch. 13). When people join together to form societies, they create a 'covenant' or social contract, which is a collective promise to abide by certain rules of behaviour. It is perhaps important to note that, for Hobbes, the social contract is not between citizens and the ruling authority but between the citizens themselves (other thinkers would extend the idea of a social contract to a binding agreement between ruler and ruled). He also notes that not everyone is bad: "the wicked were fewer than the righteous, yet because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity for suspecting" (Gottlieb, 60). In other words, because we live in perpetual fear of wicked individuals, that is, the threat of violence rather than actual violence necessarily (and this is really what Hobbes means by "war"), we must get together and form a society. A sovereign ruler is then necessary for that society in order to ensure the rules or laws are followed and that there is a more peaceful form of existence. Critics point out that there never was a clear point when humans left the state of nature and formed a society, and so the social contract idea is a total fiction.

Individual safety is guaranteed in Hobbes' vision of society by the state, but part of the price is a certain loss of individual freedom. The people must give up their free will to the state. This, and the fact that Hobbes believed the people can never dismiss their sovereign, seems to give such a ruler absolute power, a consequence that has troubled Hobbes' critics (and Hobbes himself). Hobbes clarifies the power of his sovereign by stating that only an absolute sovereign can guarantee that everyone abides by the laws. He also believes that the sovereign will act in the best interests of all and will represent the people's will; for this reason, and for its strength, a system of monarchy is better than one based on the aristocracy or a democracy.

Another advantage of a single ruler is that inside a group of rulers there would, because of Hobbes' view of human nature, inevitably be conflict between individuals and the power of the sovereign body would be compromised. Hobbes acknowledged that a single all-powerful sovereign might abuse their position, but this was, in any case, preferable to the chaos and violence of the state of nature or the inevitable chaotic breakdown of alternative political systems. Hobbes thought such an abuse unlikely since the sovereign was ultimately answerable for their actions to God in the next life. He also made the point that even if this flaw of abuse of power is admitted, it is, he argued, just as likely to occur in any other form of government. Later thinkers like Montesquieu (1689-1755) proposed a solution by separating powers in several different institutions, but Hobbes would have considered this as disadvantageous because dividing power would eventually lead to a civil war. Finally, and a point often ignored, Hobbes limits the sovereign's power to political and legal matters, he does not advocate they interfere in other areas like the arts.

A major objection to Hobbes' social contract made by critics is if people really are only motivated by self-interest then it is difficult to see why they could ever compromise even the smallest amount of the freedom they enjoy in the state of nature in order to create a society in the first place. As Hobbes himself noted, such an individual "does but betray himself his enemy" ( Leviathan , ch. 14). Hobbes does say that some (but very limited) 'rights' are never given up and are maintained by the citizen even under an absolute sovereign. Examples of these 'rights' are self-protection and prevention of self-harm. For example, a citizen can refuse the sovereign if they are requested to harm themselves physically or give testimony against themselves in a court of law.

Even if individuals did get together and give up their will to an all-powerful sovereign, some thinkers, notably John Locke (1632-1704), pointed out that life for some, especially a minority group, under a despotic ruler was no improvement on living in a state of nature. Locke also disagreed with Hobbes' view that people did not have any rights to property before they joined societies. Other thinkers suggested Hobbes' pessimistic view of human nature was just plain wrong, and, if so, then the state of nature was not necessarily all that bad, which then leads to the necessity that society and government must do rather more than simply protect people's physical safety if it is to be an improvement on that pre-societal state. Descartes was another notable critic, once stating that Hobbes' views on human nature "are extremely bad and quite dangerous in that he supposes all persons to be wicked, or gives them cause to be" (Gottlieb, 37). As we have seen, Hobbes did not believe everyone was wicked.

Hobbes, in giving primacy to the idea of self-preservation, rejects religion as a source of morality. The anti-Catholic sentiments expressed in Leviathan meant that it was safer for Hobbes to return from Paris to Protestant England. However, he won few friends in England for his stance against religious institutional interference in people's affairs and his idea that those of different faiths should be tolerated. Church leaders were not best pleased either with his pessimistic view of human nature, which strongly suggested God was an incompetent Creator. Since he denied free will and attacked the authority of the Church of England, Hobbes gained a reputation for being an atheist, which was not true, but the nickname stuck of "the Beast of Malmesbury".

The aristocracy did not like Hobbes either since he proposed that all were equal before the sovereign; he was against the prevailing idea that some people are born to rule and be more successful than others by right. Hobbes did not want to make everyone equal in terms of status and property ownership, but he did want to rid society of such conventions as gaining advantages over others because of one's parentage rather than one's talent.

Views on Science & Mathematics

Hobbes, always an admirer of geometry and mathematics, became interested in the brand new ideas of science and particularly mechanical philosophy. He wrote of his views in Of Body ( De corpore ), published in 1655. For Hobbes, matter and motion were sufficient to explain all visible phenomena, and all things visible were made up of tiny parts unseen to the naked eye (corpuscular theory). This even included God, who must, Hobbes thought, be made up of some sort of physical material, albeit a material unknown to us. Hobbes extended this idea of everything being made up of small parts to society and so believed that political institutions were simply a reflection of their individual members whose only self-interested desire was to survive.

Another influence on Hobbes' political philosophy was his great admiration of the geometry proposed by the Alexandrian mathematician Euclid (l. c. 300 BCE), as A. Gottlieb explains:

Hobbes was bedazzled by what Euclid had achieved in mathematics with the use of simple axioms and strict definitions, and he wanted to do something similar for politics. This is one of the main reasons why he was so often misunderstood. (42)

Hobbes' poor public image was not helped by a long-running spat with the mathematician John Wallis over the validity of each other's theories on circles. Another public argument followed with the scientist Robert Boyle (1627-1691) over whether or not the latter had established a vacuum inside his celebrated air pump. Nor was Hobbes, an accomplished linguist, very impressed with the new jargon scientists were increasingly prone to using. He once stated in Leviathan that "words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools" (Blackburn, 223).

These various faults, if indeed they were that, may explain Hobbes falling out of favour with other thinkers and so being excluded from the Royal Society. His reputation in the field of science certainly fared better on the Continent, where one of his more prominent admirers was the scientist and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).

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Major Works By Hobbes

The most important works by Thomas Hobbes include:

The Citizen (1642) Elements of Law (1650) Human Nature (1650) Leviathan (1651) Of Body (1655) On Matter (1656) On Man (1658)

Death & Legacy

Hobbes lived in semi-retirement in Devonshire in his later years, largely concentrating on his translation work. He died at the age of 91 near Hardwicke in Derbyshire on 4 December 1679.

Much of Hobbes' work, although inspiring discussion, was challenged during the Enlightenment because he did not allow for a more optimistic view of humanity as capable of benevolence and reason. Hobbes' link between a dark human nature and the need for absolute political authority was the very opposite of ideas proposed by philosophers like David Hume (1711-1776) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Hobbes emphasised the need for a strong authority, and so it is rather ironic that his innovative ideas on political philosophy often led to him being championed by radicals.

Hobbes' reputation did grow in the second half of the 18th century when perhaps the increasing political turmoil in Europe and elsewhere resulted in his negative view of human nature seeming more plausible. Hobbes' scepticism regarding human nature, rejection of metaphysical philosophy, and wariness of the power but also emptiness of words, has had lasting appeal for more pragmatic philosophers who seek to find practical solutions to everyday problems. Perhaps his greatest achievement, though, was to at least partially disentangle philosophy, morality, and politics from religion, an endeavour continued by the thinkers who followed him during the Enlightenment.

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Bibliography

• Blackburn, Simon. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy . Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Burns, William E. The Scientific Revolution. ABC-CLIO, 2001.
• Cameron, Euan. Early Modern Europe. Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment. Liveright, 2017.
• Hampson, Norman. The Enlightenment. Penguin Books, 1991.
• Law, Stephen. The Great Philosophers. Quercus, 2009.
• Popkin, R H et al. Philosophy Made Simple . Routledge, 1993.
• Robertson, Ritchie. The Enlightenment. Harper, 2021.
• Yolton, John W. & Rogers, Pat & Porter, Roy & Stafford, Barbara. A Companion to the Enlightenment . Wiley-Blackwell, 1991.

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Hobbes’s Moral and Political Philosophy

The 17 th Century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes is now widely regarded as one of a handful of truly great political philosophers, whose masterwork Leviathan rivals in significance the political writings of Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Rawls. Hobbes is famous for his early and elaborate development of what has come to be known as “social contract theory”, the method of justifying political principles or arrangements by appeal to the agreement that would be made among suitably situated rational, free, and equal persons. He is infamous for having used the social contract method to arrive at the astonishing conclusion that we ought to submit to the authority of an absolute—undivided and unlimited—sovereign power. While his methodological innovation had a profound constructive impact on subsequent work in political philosophy, his substantive conclusions have served mostly as a foil for the development of more palatable philosophical positions. Hobbes’s moral philosophy has been less influential than his political philosophy, in part because that theory is too ambiguous to have garnered any general consensus as to its content. Most scholars have taken Hobbes to have affirmed some sort of personal relativism or subjectivism; but views that Hobbes espoused divine command theory, virtue ethics, rule egoism, or a form of projectivism also find support in Hobbes’s texts and among scholars. Because Hobbes held that “the true doctrine of the Lawes of Nature is the true Morall philosophie”, differences in interpretation of Hobbes’s moral philosophy can be traced to differing understandings of the status and operation of Hobbes’s “laws of nature”, which laws will be discussed below. The formerly dominant view that Hobbes espoused psychological egoism as the foundation of his moral theory is currently widely rejected, and there has been to date no fully systematic study of Hobbes’s moral psychology.

1. Major Political Writings

2. the philosophical project, 3. the state of nature, 4. the state of nature is a state of war, 5. further questions about the state of nature, 6. the laws of nature, 7. establishing sovereign authority, 8. absolutism, 9. responsibility and the limits of political obligation, 10. religion and social instability, 11. hobbes on gender and race, collections, books and articles, other internet resources, related entries.

Hobbes wrote several versions of his political philosophy, including The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (also under the titles Human Nature and De Corpore Politico) published in 1650, De Cive (1642) published in English as Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society in 1651, the English Leviathan published in 1651, and its Latin revision in 1668. Others of his works are also important in understanding his political philosophy, especially his history of the English Civil War, Behemoth (published 1679), De Corpore (1655), De Homine (1658), Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (1681), and The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance (1656). All of Hobbes’s major writings are collected in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes , edited by Sir William Molesworth (11 volumes, London 1839–45), and Thomae Hobbes Opera Philosophica Quae Latina Scripsit Omnia , also edited by Molesworth (5 volumes; London, 1839–45). Oxford University Press has undertaken a projected 26 volume collection of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes . So far 3 volumes are available: De Cive (edited by Howard Warrender), The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (edited by Noel Malcolm), and Writings on Common Law and Hereditary Right (edited by Alan Cromartie and Quentin Skinner). Recently Noel Malcolm has published a three volume edition of Leviathan , which places the English text side by side with Hobbes’s later Latin version of it. Readers new to Hobbes should begin with Leviathan , being sure to read Parts Three and Four, as well as the more familiar and often excerpted Parts One and Two. There are many fine overviews of Hobbes’s normative philosophy, some of which are listed in the following selected bibliography of secondary works.

Hobbes sought to discover rational principles for the construction of a civil polity that would not be subject to destruction from within. Having lived through the period of political disintegration culminating in the English Civil War, he came to the view that the burdens of even the most oppressive government are “scarce sensible, in respect of the miseries, and horrible calamities, that accompany a Civill Warre”. Because virtually any government would be better than a civil war, and, according to Hobbes’s analysis, all but absolute governments are systematically prone to dissolution into civil war, people ought to submit themselves to an absolute political authority. Continued stability will require that they also refrain from the sorts of actions that might undermine such a regime. For example, subjects should not dispute the sovereign power and under no circumstances should they rebel. In general, Hobbes aimed to demonstrate the reciprocal relationship between political obedience and peace.

To establish these conclusions, Hobbes invites us to consider what life would be like in a state of nature, that is, a condition without government. Perhaps we would imagine that people might fare best in such a state, where each decides for herself how to act, and is judge, jury and executioner in her own case whenever disputes arise—and that at any rate, this state is the appropriate baseline against which to judge the justifiability of political arrangements. Hobbes terms this situation “the condition of mere nature”, a state of perfectly private judgment, in which there is no agency with recognized authority to arbitrate disputes and effective power to enforce its decisions.

Hobbes’s near descendant, John Locke, insisted in his Second Treatise of Government that the state of nature was indeed to be preferred to subjection to the arbitrary power of an absolute sovereign. But Hobbes famously argued that such a “dissolute condition of masterlesse men, without subjection to Lawes, and a coercive Power to tye their hands from rapine, and revenge” would make impossible all of the basic security upon which comfortable, sociable, civilized life depends. There would be “no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” If this is the state of nature, people have strong reasons to avoid it, which can be done only by submitting to some mutually recognized public authority, for “so long a man is in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war,) as private appetite is the measure of good and evill.”

Although many readers have criticized Hobbes’s state of nature as unduly pessimistic, he constructs it from a number of individually plausible empirical and normative assumptions. He assumes that people are sufficiently similar in their mental and physical attributes that no one is invulnerable nor can expect to be able to dominate the others. Hobbes assumes that people generally “shun death”, and that the desire to preserve their own lives is very strong in most people. While people have local affections, their benevolence is limited, and they have a tendency to partiality. Concerned that others should agree with their own high opinions of themselves, people are sensitive to slights. They make evaluative judgments, but often use seemingly impersonal terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to stand for their own personal preferences. They are curious about the causes of events, and anxious about their futures; according to Hobbes, these characteristics incline people to adopt religious beliefs, although the content of those beliefs will differ depending upon the sort of religious education one has happened to receive.

With respect to normative assumptions, Hobbes ascribes to each person in the state of nature a liberty right to preserve herself, which he terms “the right of nature”. This is the right to do whatever one sincerely judges needful for one’s preservation; yet because it is at least possible that virtually anything might be judged necessary for one’s preservation, this theoretically limited right of nature becomes in practice an unlimited right to potentially anything, or, as Hobbes puts it, a right “to all things”. Hobbes further assumes as a principle of practical rationality, that people should adopt what they see to be the necessary means to their most important ends.

Taken together, these plausible descriptive and normative assumptions yield a state of nature potentially fraught with divisive struggle. The right of each to all things invites serious conflict, especially if there is competition for resources, as there will surely be over at least scarce goods such as the most desirable lands, spouses, etc. People will quite naturally fear that others may (citing the right of nature) invade them, and may rationally plan to strike first as an anticipatory defense. Moreover, that minority of prideful or “vain-glorious” persons who take pleasure in exercising power over others will naturally elicit preemptive defensive responses from others. Conflict will be further fueled by disagreement in religious views, in moral judgments, and over matters as mundane as what goods one actually needs, and what respect one properly merits. Hobbes imagines a state of nature in which each person is free to decide for herself what she needs, what she’s owed, what’s respectful, right, pious, prudent, and also free to decide all of these questions for the behavior of everyone else as well, and to act on her judgments as she thinks best, enforcing her views where she can. In this situation where there is no common authority to resolve these many and serious disputes, we can easily imagine with Hobbes that the state of nature would become a “state of war”, even worse, a war of “all against all”.

In response to the natural question whether humanity ever was generally in any such state of nature, Hobbes gives three examples of putative states of nature. First, he notes that all sovereigns are in this state with respect to one another. This claim has made Hobbes the representative example of a “realist” in international relations. Second, he opined that many now civilized peoples were formerly in that state, and some few peoples—“the savage people in many places of America” ( Leviathan , XIII), for instance—were still to his day in the state of nature. Third and most significantly, Hobbes asserts that the state of nature will be easily recognized by those whose formerly peaceful states have collapsed into civil war. While the state of nature’s condition of perfectly private judgment is an abstraction, something resembling it too closely for comfort remains a perpetually present possibility, to be feared, and avoided.

Do the other assumptions of Hobbes’s philosophy license the existence of this imagined state of isolated individuals pursuing their private judgments? Probably not, since, as feminist critics among others have noted, children are by Hobbes’s theory assumed to have undertaken an obligation of obedience to their parents in exchange for nurturing, and so the primitive units in the state of nature will include families ordered by internal obligations, as well as individuals. The bonds of affection, sexual affinity, and friendship—as well as of clan membership and shared religious belief—may further decrease the accuracy of any purely individualistic model of the state of nature. This concession need not impugn Hobbes’s analysis of conflict in the state of nature, since it may turn out that competition, diffidence and glory-seeking are disastrous sources of conflicts among small groups just as much as they are among individuals. Still, commentators seeking to answer the question how precisely we should understand Hobbes’s state of nature are investigating the degree to which Hobbes imagines that to be a condition of interaction among isolated individuals.

Another important open question is that of what, exactly, it is about human beings that makes it the case (supposing Hobbes is right) that our communal life is prone to disaster when we are left to interact according only to our own individual judgments. Perhaps, while people do wish to act for their own best long-term interest, they are shortsighted, and so indulge their current interests without properly considering the effects of their current behavior on their long-term interest. This would be a type of failure of rationality. Alternatively, it may be that people in the state of nature are fully rational, but are trapped in a situation that makes it individually rational for each to act in a way that is sub-optimal for all, perhaps finding themselves in the familiar ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ of game theory. Or again, it may be that Hobbes’s state of nature would be peaceful but for the presence of persons (just a few, or perhaps all, to some degree) whose passions overrule their calmer judgments; who are prideful, spiteful, partial, envious, jealous, and in other ways prone to behave in ways that lead to war. Such an account would understand irrational human passions to be the source of conflict. Which, if any, of these accounts adequately answers to Hobbes’s text is a matter of continuing debate among Hobbes scholars. Game theorists have been particularly active in these debates, experimenting with different models for the state of nature and the conflict it engenders.

Hobbes argues that the state of nature is a miserable state of war in which none of our important human ends are reliably realizable. Happily, human nature also provides resources to escape this miserable condition. Hobbes argues that each of us, as a rational being, can see that a war of all against all is inimical to the satisfaction of her interests, and so can agree that “peace is good, and therefore also the way or means of peace are good”. Humans will recognize as imperatives the injunction to seek peace, and to do those things necessary to secure it, when they can do so safely. Hobbes calls these practical imperatives “Lawes of Nature”, the sum of which is not to treat others in ways we would not have them treat us. These “precepts”, “conclusions” or “theorems” of reason are “eternal and immutable”, always commanding our assent even when they may not safely be acted upon. They forbid many familiar vices such as iniquity, cruelty, and ingratitude. Although commentators do not agree on whether these laws should be regarded as mere precepts of prudence, or rather as divine commands, or moral imperatives of some other sort, all agree that Hobbes understands them to direct people to submit to political authority. They tell us to seek peace with willing others by laying down part of our “right to all things”, by mutually covenanting to submit to the authority of a sovereign, and further direct us to keep that covenant establishing sovereignty.

When people mutually covenant each to the others to obey a common authority, they have established what Hobbes calls “sovereignty by institution”. When, threatened by a conqueror, they covenant for protection by promising obedience, they have established “sovereignty by acquisition”. These are equally legitimate ways of establishing sovereignty, according to Hobbes, and their underlying motivation is the same—namely fear—whether of one’s fellows or of a conqueror. The social covenant involves both the renunciation or transfer of right and the authorization of the sovereign power. Political legitimacy depends not on how a government came to power, but only on whether it can effectively protect those who have consented to obey it; political obligation ends when protection ceases.

Although Hobbes offered some mild pragmatic grounds for preferring monarchy to other forms of government, his main concern was to argue that effective government—whatever its form—must have absolute authority. Its powers must be neither divided nor limited. The powers of legislation, adjudication, enforcement, taxation, war-making (and the less familiar right of control of normative doctrine) are connected in such a way that a loss of one may thwart effective exercise of the rest; for example, legislation without interpretation and enforcement will not serve to regulate conduct. Only a government that possesses all of what Hobbes terms the “essential rights of sovereignty” can be reliably effective, since where partial sets of these rights are held by different bodies that disagree in their judgments as to what is to be done, paralysis of effective government, or degeneration into a civil war to settle their dispute, may occur.

Similarly, to impose limitation on the authority of the government is to invite irresoluble disputes over whether it has overstepped those limits. If each person is to decide for herself whether the government should be obeyed, factional disagreement—and war to settle the issue, or at least paralysis of effective government—are quite possible. To refer resolution of the question to some further authority, itself also limited and so open to challenge for overstepping its bounds, would be to initiate an infinite regress of non-authoritative ‘authorities’ (where the buck never stops). To refer it to a further authority itself unlimited, would be just to relocate the seat of absolute sovereignty, a position entirely consistent with Hobbes’s insistence on absolutism. To avoid the horrible prospect of governmental collapse and return to the state of nature, people should treat their sovereign as having absolute authority.

When subjects institute a sovereign by authorizing it, they agree, in conformity with the principle “no wrong is done to a consenting party”, not to hold it liable for any errors in judgment it may make and not to treat any harms it does to them as actionable injustices. Although many interpreters have assumed that by authorizing a sovereign, subjects become morally responsible for the actions it commands, Hobbes instead insists that “the external actions done in obedience to [laws], without the inward approbation, are the actions of the sovereign, and not of the subject, which is in that case but as an instrument, without any motion of his own at all” (Leviathan xlii, 106). It may be important to Hobbes’s project of persuading his Christian readers to obey their sovereign that he can reassure them that God will not hold them responsible for wrongful actions done at the sovereign’s command, because they cannot reasonably be expected to obey if doing so would jeopardize their eternal prospects. Hence Hobbes explains that “whatsoever a subject...is compelled to do in obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not his, but his sovereign’s.” (Leviathan xlii. 11) This position reinforces absolutism by permitting Hobbes to maintain that subjects can obey even commands to perform actions they believe to be sinful without fear of divine punishment.

Hobbes’s description of the way in which persons should be understood to become subjects to a sovereign authority changes from his Elements and De Cive accounts to his Leviathan account. In the former, each person lays down their rights (of self-government and to pursue all things they judge useful or necessary for their survival and commodious living) in favor of one and the same sovereign person (whether a natural person, as a monarch, or an artificial person, as a rule-governed assembly). In these earlier accounts, sovereigns alone retain their right of nature to act on their own private judgment in all matters, and also exercise the transferred rights of subjects. Whether exercising its own retained right of nature or the subjects’ transferred rights, the sovereign’s action is attributable to the sovereign itself, and it bears moral responsibility for it. In contrast, Hobbes’s Leviathan account has each individual covenanting to “own and authorize” all of the sovereign’s actions—whatever the sovereign does as a public figure or commands that subjects do. This change creates an apparent inconsistency in Hobbes’s theory of responsibility for actions done at the sovereign’s command; if in “owning and authorizing” all their sovereign’s actions, subjects become morally responsible for all that it does and all they do in obedience to its commands, Hobbes cannot consistently maintain his position that merely obedient actions in response to sovereign commands are the moral responsibility of the sovereign alone. One resolution of this apparent inconsistency denies that Hobbes’s idea of authorization carries along responsibility for the act authorized, as our contemporary idea of authorization generally does.

While Hobbes insists that we should regard our governments as having absolute authority, he reserves to subjects the liberty of disobeying some of their government’s commands. He argues that subjects retain a right of self-defense against the sovereign power, giving them the right to disobey or resist when their lives are in danger. He also gives them seemingly broad resistance rights in cases in which their families or even their honor are at stake. These exceptions have understandably intrigued those who study Hobbes. His ascription of apparently inalienable rights—what he calls the “true liberties of subjects”—seems incompatible with his defense of absolute sovereignty. Moreover, if the sovereign’s failure to provide adequate protection to subjects extinguishes their obligation to obey, and if it is left to each subject to judge for herself the adequacy of that protection, it seems that people have never really exited the fearsome state of nature. This aspect of Hobbes’s political philosophy has been hotly debated ever since Hobbes’s time. Bishop Bramhall, one of Hobbes’s contemporaries, famously accused Leviathan of being a “Rebell’s Catechism.” More recently, some commentators have argued that Hobbes’s discussion of the limits of political obligation is the Achilles’ heel of his theory. It is not clear whether or not this charge can stand up to scrutiny, but it will surely be the subject of much continued discussion.

The last crucial aspect of Hobbes’s political philosophy is his treatment of religion. Hobbes progressively expands his discussion of Christian religion in each revision of his political philosophy, until it comes in Leviathan to comprise roughly half the book. There is no settled consensus on how Hobbes understands the significance of religion within his political theory. Some commentators have argued that Hobbes is trying to demonstrate to his readers the compatibility of his political theory with core Christian commitments, since it may seem that Christians’ religious duties forbid their affording the sort of absolute obedience to their governors which Hobbes’s theory requires of them. Others have doubted the sincerity of his professed Christianity, arguing that by the use of irony or other subtle rhetorical devices, Hobbes sought to undermine his readers’ religious beliefs. Howsoever his intentions are properly understood, Hobbes’s obvious concern with the power of religious belief is a fact that interpreters of his political philosophy must seek to explain.

Scholars are increasingly interested in how Hobbes thought of the status of women, and of the family. Hobbes was one of the earliest western philosophers to count women as persons when devising a social contract among persons. He insists on the equality of all people, very explicitly including women. People are equal because they are all subject to domination, and all potentially capable of dominating others. No person is so strong as to be invulnerable to attack while sleeping by the concerted efforts of others, nor is any so strong as to be assured of dominating all others.

In this relevant sense, women are naturally equal to men. They are equally naturally free, meaning that their consent is required before they will be under the authority of anyone else. In this, Hobbes’s claims stand in stark contrast to many prevailing views of the time, according to which women were born inferior to and subordinate to men. Sir Robert Filmer, who later served as the target of John Locke’s First Treatise of Government , is a well-known proponent of this view, which he calls patriarchalism. Explicitly rejecting the patriarchalist view as well as Salic law, Hobbes maintains that women can be sovereigns; authority for him is “neither male nor female”. He also argues for natural maternal right: in the state of nature, dominion over children naturally belongs to the mother. He adduced the example of the Amazon warrior women as evidence.

In seeming contrast to this egalitarian foundation, Hobbes spoke of the commonwealth in patriarchal language. In the move from the state of nature to civil society, families are described as “fathers”, “servants”, and “children”, seemingly obliterating mothers from the picture entirely. Hobbes justifies this way of talking by saying that it is fathers not mothers who have founded societies. As true as that is, it is easy to see how there is a lively debate between those who emphasize the potentially feminist or egalitarian aspects of Hobbes’s thought and those who emphasize his ultimate exclusion of women. Such debates raise the question: To what extent are the patriarchal claims Hobbes makes integral to his overall theory, if indeed they are integral at all?

We find similar ambiguities and tensions in what Hobbes says about race (or what we would now call race). On the one hand, he invokes the “savages” of the Americas to illustrate the “brutish” conditions of life in the state of nature. On the other hand, when he simply denies that there are innate or immutable differences between Native Americans and Europeans. Societies which have enjoyed scientific advancement have done so, according to Hobbes, because of the existence of “leisure time,” and if that is “supposed away,” he asks rhetorically, “what do we differ from the wildest of the Indians?”

The secondary literature on Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy (not to speak of his entire body of work) is vast, appearing across many disciplines and in many languages. The following is a narrow selection of fairly recent works by philosophers, political theorists, and intellectual historians, available in English, on main areas of inquiry in Hobbes’s moral and political thought. Very helpful for further reference is the critical bibliography of Hobbes scholarship to 1990 contained in Zagorin, P., 1990, “Hobbes on Our Mind”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 51(2).

• Hobbes Studies is an annually published journal devoted to scholarly research on all aspects of Hobbes’s work.
• Brown, K.C. (ed.), 1965, Hobbes Studies , Cambridge: Harvard University Press, contains important papers by A.E. Taylor, J.W. N. Watkins, Howard Warrender, and John Plamenatz, among others.
• Caws, P. (ed.), 1989, The Causes of Quarrell: Essays on Peace, War, and Thomas Hobbes , Boston: Beacon Press.
• Courtland, S. (ed.), 2017, Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy , New York: Routledge.
• Dietz, M. (ed.), 1990, Thomas Hobbes and Political Theory , Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
• Dyzenhaus, D. and T. Poole (eds.), 2013, Hobbes and the Law , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Douglass, R. and J. Olsthoorn (eds.), 2019, Hobbes's On the Citizen: A Critical Guide , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Finkelstein, C. (ed.), 2005, Hobbes on Law , Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Hirschmann, N. and J. Wright (eds.), 2012, Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes , University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
• Lloyd, S.A. (ed.), 2012, Hobbes Today: Insights for the 21st Century , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2013, The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes , London: Bloomsbury.
• –––, 2019, Interpretations of Hobbes’ Political Theory , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lloyd, S.A. (ed.), 2001, “Special Issue on Recent Work on the Moral and Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 82 (3&4).
• Martinich, A.P. and Kinch Hoekstra (eds.), 2016, The Oxford Handbook of Hobbes , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Odzuck, E. and A. Chadwick (eds.), 2020, Feminist Perspectives on Hobbes , special issue of Hobbes Studies .
• Rogers, G.A.J. and A. Ryan (eds.), 1988, Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Rogers, G.A.J. (ed.), 1995, Leviathan: Contemporary Responses to the Political Theory of Thomas Hobbes , Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
• Rogers, G.A.J. and T. Sorell (eds.), 2000, Hobbes and History . London: Routledge.
• Shaver, R. (ed.), 1999, Hobbes , Hanover: Dartmouth Press.
• Sorell, T. (ed.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Sorell, T., and L. Foisneau (eds.), 2004, Leviathan after 350 years , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sorell, T. and G.A.J. Rogers (eds.), 2000, Hobbes and History , London: Routledge.
• Springborg, P. (ed.), 2007, The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Abizadeh, A., 2011, “Hobbes on the Causes of War: A Disagreement Theory”, American Political Science Review , 105 (2): 298–315.
• –––, 2018, Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Armitage, D., 2007, “Hobbes and the foundations of modern international thought”, in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ashcraft, R., 1971, “Hobbes’s Natural Man: A Study in Ideology Formation”, Journal of Politics , 33: 1076–1117.
• –––, 2010, “Slavery Discourse before the Restoration: The Barbary Coast, Justinian’s Digest, and Hobbes’s Political Theory”, History of European Ideas , 36 (2): 412–418.
• Baumgold, D., 1988, Hobbes’s Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bejan, T.M., 2010, “Teaching the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Education”, Oxford Review of Education , 36(5): 607–626.
• –––, 2016, “Difference without Disagreement: Rethinking Hobbes on ‘Independency’ and Toleration”, The Review of Politics , 78(1): 1–25.
• –––, forthcoming, “Hobbes Against Hate Speech”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , first online: 03 Feb 2022. doi:10.1080/09608788.2022.2027340.
• Baumgold, D., 2013, “Trust in Hobbes’s Political Thought”, Political Theory , 41(6): 835–55.
• Benhabib, S., 2022, “Thomas Hobbes on My Mind: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes”, Social Research: An International Quarterly , 89(2): 233–247.
• Bobier, C., 2020, “Rethinking Thomas Hobbes on the Passions”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 101(4): 582–602.
• Bobbio, N., 1993, Thomas Hobbes and the Natural Law Tradition , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Boonin-Vail, D., 1994, Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Boucher, D., 2018, Appropriating Hobbes: Legacies in Political, Legal, and International Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Byron, M., 2015, Submission and Subjection in Leviathan: Good Subjects in the Hobbbesian Commonwealth , Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Collins, J., 2005, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Curley, E., 1988, “I durst not write so boldly: or how to read Hobbes’ theological-political treatise”, E. Giancotti (ed.), Proceedings of the Conference on Hobbes and Spinoza , Urbino.
• –––, 1994, “Introduction to Hobbes’s Leviathan ”, Leviathan with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668, E. Curley (ed.), Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• Curran, E., 2006, “Can Rights Curb the Hobbesian Sovereign? The Full Right to Self-preservation, Duties of Sovereignty and the Limitations of Hohfeld”, Law and Philosophy , 25: 243–265.
• –––, 2007, Reclaiming the Rights of Hobbesian Subjects , Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
• –––, 2013, “An Immodest Proposal: Hobbes Rather than Locke Provides a Forerunner for Modern Rights Theory”, Law and Philosophy , 32 (4): 515–538.
• Darwall, S., 1995. The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’, 1640–1740 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• ––– 2000, “Normativity and Projection in Hobbes’s Leviathan ”, The Philosophical Review , 109 (3): 313–347.
• Ewin, R.E., 1991, Virtues and Rights: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes , Boulder: Westview Press.
• Finn, S., 2006, Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Natural Philosophy , London: Continuum Press.
• Field, S.L., 2020, Potentia: Hobbes and Spinoza on Power and Popular Politics , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Flathman, R., 1993, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics , Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Garofalo, P., 2021, “Psychology and Obligation in Hobbes: The Case of Ought Implies Can”, Hobbes Studies , 34(1): 146–171.
• Gauthier, D., 1969, The Logic of ‘Leviathan’: The Moral and political Theory of Thomas Hobbes , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Gert, B., 1967, “Hobbes and Psychological Egoism”, Journal of the History of Ideas , 28: 503–520.
• ––– 1978, “Introduction to Man and Citizen”, Man and Citizen , B. Gert, (ed.), New York: Humanities Press.
• ––– 1988, “The Law of Nature and the Moral Law”, Hobbes Studies , 1: 26–44.
• Goldsmith, M. M., 1966, Hobbes’s Science of Politics , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Gray, M., 2010, “Feminist Interpretations of Thomas Hobbes: A Response to Carole Pateman and Susan Okin”, CEU Political Science Journal , 1(1): 1–29.
• Green, M., 2015, “Authorization and Political Authority in Hobbes”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 62(3): 25–47.
• Hall, B., 2005, “Hobbes on Race” in Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Hampton, J., 1986, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Herbert, G., 1989, Thomas Hobbes: The Unity of Scientific and Moral Wisdom , Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
• Hoekstra, K., 1999, “Nothing to Declare: Hobbes and the Advocate of Injustice”, Political Theory , 27 (2): 230–235.
• –––, 2003, “Hobbes on Law, Nature and Reason”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 41 (1): 111–120.
• –––, 2006, “The End of Philosophy”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 106: 25–62.
• –––, 2007, “A Lion in the House: Hobbes and Democracy” in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2013, “Early Modern Absolutism and Constitutionalism”, Cardozo Law Review , 34 (3): 1079–1098.
• Holden, T., 2018, “Hobbes on the Authority of Scripture”, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy , 8: 68–95.
• Hood, E.C., 1964. The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Johnston, D., 1986, The Rhetoric of ‘Leviathan’: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Kapust, Daniel J. and Brandon P. Turner, 2013, “Democratical Gentlemen and the Lust for Mastery: Status, Ambition, and the Language of Liberty in Hobbes’s Political Thought”, Political Theory , 41 (4): 648–675.
• Kavka, G., 1986, Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Koganzon, R., 2015, “The Hostile Family and the Purpose of the ‘Natural Kingdom’ in Hobbes's Political Thought”, The Review of Politics , 77(3): 377–398.
• Kramer, M., 1997, Hobbes and the Paradox of Political Origins , New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Krom, M., 2011, The Limits of Reason in Hobbes’s Commonwealth , New York: Continuum Press.
• LeBuffe, M., 2003, “Hobbes on the Origin of Obligation”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 11 (1): 15–39.
• Lloyd, S.A., 1992, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s ‘Leviathan’: the Power of Mind over Matter , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1998, “Contemporary Uses of Hobbes’s political philosophy”, in Rational Commitment and Social Justice: Essays for Gregory Kavka , J. Coleman and C. Morris (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2009, Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2016, “Authorization and Moral Responsibility in the Philosophy of Hobbes”, Hobbes Studies , 29: 169–88.
• –––, 2017, “Duty Without Obligation”, Hobbes Studies , 30: 202–221.
• –––, 2022, “Hobbes’s Theory of Responsibility as Support for Sommerville’s Argument Against Hobbes’s Approval of Independency”, Hobbes Studies , 35(1): 51–66.
• Lott, T., 2002, “Patriarchy and Slavery in Hobbes’s Political Philosophy” in Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays , pp. 63–80.
• Luban, D., 2018, “Hobbesian Slavery”, Political Theory , 46(5): 726–748.
• Macpherson, C.B., 1962, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1968, “Introduction”, Leviathan , C.B. Macpherson (ed.), London: Penguin.
• Malcolm, N., 2002, Aspects of Hobbes , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Martel, J., 2007, Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat , New York: Columbia University Press.
• Martinich, A.P., 1992, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1995, A Hobbes Dictionary , Oxford: Blackwell.
• –––, 1999, Hobbes: A Biography , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2005, Hobbes , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2011, “The Sovereign in the Political Thought of Hanfeizi and Thomas Hobbes”, Journal of Chinese Philosophy , 38 (1): 64–72.
• –––, 2021, Hobbes’s Political Philosophy: Interpretation and Interpretations , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• May, L., 2013, Limiting Leviathan: Hobbes on Law and International Affairs , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• McClure, C.S., 2013, “War, Madness, and Death: The Paradox of Honor in Hobbes’s Leviathan”, The Journal of Politics , 76 (1): 114–125.
• Moehler, M., 2009, “Why Hobbes’ State of Nature is Best Modeled by an Assurance Game”, Utilitas , 21 (3): 297–326.
• Moloney, P., 2011, “Hobbes, Savagery, and International Anarchy”, American Political Science Review , 105 (1): 189–204.
• Murphy, M., 2000, “Hobbes on the Evil of Death”, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie , 82: 36–61.
• Nagel, T., 1959, “Hobbes’s Concept of Obligation”, Philosophical Review , 68: 68–83.
• Nyquist, M., 2009, “Hobbes, Slavery, and Despotical Rule” Representations , 106(1): 1–33.
• Oakeshott, M., 1975. Hobbes on Civil Association , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Olsthoorn, J., 2013, “Why Justice and Injustice Have No Place Outside the Hobbesian State”, European Journal of Political Theory .
• –––, 2013, “Hobbes Account of Distributive Justice as Equity”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy , 21 (1): 13–33.
• –––, 2015, “Hobbes on Justice, Property Rights, and Self-ownership”, History of Political Thought , 36(3): 471–498.
• Pateman, C., 1989, “‘God hath ordained to man a helper’: Hobbes, Patriarchy and Conjugal Right”, British Journal of Political Science , 19(4): 445–463.
• Peacock, M., 2010, “Obligation and Advantage in Hobbes’ Leviathan”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy , 40 (3): 433–458.
• Petit, P., 2008, Made With Words: Hobbes on Language, Mind, and Politics , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Raphael, D. D., 1977, Hobbes: Morals and Politics , London: Routledge Press.
• Rustighi, L., 2020, “Rethinking the Sexual Contract: The Case of Thomas Hobbes”, Philosophy & Social Criticism , 46(3): 274–301.
• Ryan, A., 1986, “A More Tolerant Hobbes?”, S. Mendus, (ed.), Justifying Toleration , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Shelton, G., 1992, Morality and Sovereignty in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes , New York: St. Martin’s Press.
• Schneewind, J.B., 1997, The Invention of Autonomy: History of Modern Moral Philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Schwitzgebel, E., 2007, “Human Nature and Moral Education in Mencius, Xunzi, Hobbes, and Rousseau”, History of Philosophy Quarterly , 24 (2): 147–168.
• Skinner, Q., 1996, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2002, Visions of Politics Volume 3: Hobbes and Civil Science , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2005, “Hobbes on Representation”, European Journal of Philosophy , 13 (2): 155–184.
• –––, 2008, Hobbes and Republican Liberty , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Slomp, G., 1994, “Hobbes and the Equality of Women” Political Studies , 42(3): 441–452.
• –––, 2019, “As Thick as Thieves: Exploring Thomas Hobbes’ Critique of Ancient Friendship and its Contemporary Relevance”, Political Studies , 67(1): 191–206.
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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Entry on Thomas Hobbes , by Garrath Williams, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• A blog discussing Hobbes’s relevance to contemporary issues .
• European Hobbes Society .

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Biography Online

Thomas Hobbes Biography

Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury in 1588. He liked to recall that he was born prematurely because his mother heard the approaching Spanish Armada. His father was a wayward country vicar and he was mainly brought up by an uncle. He was able to go to Magdalen College, Oxford University to study between (1603-08).

Hobbes was employed by the Cavendish family, the Earls of Devonshire. He was able to travel widely and he benefited from their lifelong patronage. On his travels, he was able to meet with some of the leading thinkers of the day, such as Bacon, Selden, Ben Jonson and Galileo .

At the age of about 40, he was introduced to Euclidean geometry which fascinated him. He became interested in trying to expand this same logic and deduction to other fields of society and life. He began writing political philosophy, such as Elements of Law Natural and politic (1650). This laid out a justification for Monarchy government. His theoretical support for the Royalist cause meant that during the civil war, he fled England to escape the Parliamentarians. In Paris, he served as tutor to the Prince of Wales (the future Charles II)

Despite being a Royalist, he was also often criticised for being an atheist. However, Hobbes, himself, didn’t see himself as an atheist, but he did write against Divine Providence and against the political power of religion. He also wrote a critique of Descartes’ Meditations which tried to prove the existence of God.

In 1651, he wrote his most famous work (Leviathan) which constructed a materialistic and rational system for explaining metaphysics, psychology and political philosophy.

Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another…

• Leviathan Pt. I, Ch. 5.

He stated that man was essentially motivated by self-interest,

“The condition of man . . . is a condition of war of everyone against everyone”

— – Thomas Hobbes

and thus a sovereign state should seek to promote an enlightened self-interest in which we form a social contract to prevent the abuse of power.

The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature.

– Leviathan, The Second Part, Chapter 30: Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative.

In 1652, he returned to England, after making an agreement with Cromwell and his parliamentarians. He continued to write polemics for the rest of his life. However, he was helped by his old student Charles II – after his restoration to the monarchy.

He continued writing well into his 80s, on a wide range of subjects from the causes of the English civil war to translations of classic literature like Iliad and Odyssey.

He died in 1697 of a bladder disorder. He was buried at Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England. His last words were said to be:

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

– Thomas Hobbes

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Thomas Hobbes ”, Oxford, UK www.biographyonline.net , 22nd Jan 2013. Last updated 1 March 2018

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Thomas Hobbes Biography

Born: April 5, 1588 Westport, England Died: December 4, 1679 Hardwick Hall, England English philosopher and political theorist

Born prematurely on April 5, 1588, when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada (a fleet of Spanish warships), Thomas Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." His father, also named Thomas Hobbes, was the vicar (a clergyman in charge of a church) of Westport near Malmesbury in Gloucestershire, England. After being involved in a fight with another clergyman outside his own church, the elder Thomas Hobbes was forced to flee to London, England, leaving his wife, two boys and a girl behind.

Thomas was then raised and educated by an uncle and studied at the local schools. By the age of six he was studying Latin and Greek. Also at this time, Hobbes became absorbed in the classic literature of ancient Greece. From 1603 to 1608 he studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was bored by the philosophy of Aristotelianism (studying the works of Aristotle, a fourth-century B.C.E. Greek philosopher).

Scholarly work

The twenty-year-old future philosopher became a tutor to the Cavendish family, a well-known English family. This association provided him with a private library, foreign travel, and introductions to influential people. Hobbes learned to speak Italian and German and soon decided to devote his life to scholarly pursuits.

Hobbes, however, was slow in developing his thought—his first work, a translation of Greek historian Thucydides's (died c. 401 B.C.E. ) History of the Peloponnesian Wars, did not appear until 1629. Thucydides held that knowledge of the past was useful for determining correct action, and Hobbes said that he offered the translation during a period of civil unrest as a reminder that the ancients believed democracy (rule by the people) to be the least effective form of government.

In Hobbes's own estimation the most important intellectual event of his life occurred when he was forty. While waiting for a friend he wandered into a library and came across a copy of Euclid's (third century B.C.E. ) geometry. His interest in mathematics is reflected in his second work, A Short Treatise on First Principles, which presents a mechanical interpretation of sensation, as well as in his brief stint as mathematics tutor to Charles II (1630–1685).

For the rest of his long life Hobbes travelled and published many works. In France he met mathematicians René Descartes (1596–1650) and the Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655). In 1640 he wrote one of the sets of arguments to Descartes's Meditations.

Although born into the Elizabethan Age (c. 1550–1600; a time of great change in England), Hobbes outlived all of the major seventeenth-century thinkers. He became a sort of English icon and continued writing, offering new translations of Homer (an eighth-century B.C.E. Greek poet) in his eighties because he had "nothing else to do." When he was past ninety, he became involved in controversies with the Royal Society, an organization of scientists. He invited friends to suggest appropriate epitaphs (an inscription on a tombstone) and favored one that read "this is the true philosopher's stone." He died on December 4, 1679, at the age of ninety-one.

His philosophy

The questions Hobbes posed to the world in the seventeenth century are still relevant today, and Hobbes still maintains a strong influence in the world of philosophy. He challenged the relationship between science and religion, and the natural limitations of political power.

The diverse intellectual paths of the seventeenth century, which are generically called modern classical philosophy, began by rejecting authorities of the past—especially Aristotle and his peers. Descartes, who founded the rationalist tradition, and Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who is considered the originator of modern empiricism (political theory regarding the British Empire), both sought new methods for achieving scientific knowledge and a clear conception of reality.

Hobbes was fascinated by the problem of sense perception, and he extended Galileo's (1564–1642) mechanical physics into an explanation of human cognition (process of learning). He believed the origin of all thought is sensation, which consists of mental images produced by the pressure of motion of external objects. Thus Hobbes anticipated later thought by explaining differences between the external object and the internal image. These sense images are extended by the power of memory and imagination. Understanding and reason, which distinguish men from other animals, are a product of our ability to use speech.

Political thought

Hobbes explains the connection between nature, man, and society through the law of inertia ("bodies at rest tend to stay at rest; bodies in motion tend to stay in motion"). Thus man's desire to do what he wants is checked only by an equal and opposite need for security. Society "is but an artificial man" invented by man, so to understand politics one should merely consider himself as part of nature.

Such a reading is cold comfort as life before society is characterized by Hobbes, in a famous quotation, as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The equality of human desire is matched by an economy of natural satisfactions. Men are addicted to power because gaining power is the only guarantee of living well. Such men live in a state of constant war, driven by competition and desire for the same goods. The important result of this view is man's natural right to seek self-preservation (protection of one's self) by any means. In this state of nature there is no value above self-interest because the absence of common power results in the absence of law and justice. But there is a second law of nature that men may surrender their individual will to the state. This "social contract" binds the individual to treat others as he expects to be treated by them.

In Hobbes's view the sovereign power of a commonwealth (England's power over its colonies) is absolute and not subject to the laws of its citizens. Obedience will remain as long as the sovereign (England) fulfills the social contract by protecting the rights of the individual. According to these laws Hobbes believed that rebellion is, by definition, unjust. However, should a revolution prove victorious, a new absolute sovereignty would rise up to take the place of the old one.

For More Information

Condren, Conal. Thomas Hobbes. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

Green, Arnold W. Hobbes and Human Nature. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993.

Martinich, Aloysius. Hobbes: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Taylor, A. E. Thomas Hobbes. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970

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GREAT THINKERS Thomas Hobbes

An Introduction to the Work of Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes presents himself as the first true political philosopher, the first to offer exact knowledge of justice, sovereignty, and citizenship. Hobbes claims, moreover, that his systematic political science will revolutionize political practice, enabling us to build more stable, peaceful, and productive societies. In order to achieve these results, though, Hobbes must promote a view of the proper scope of politics that is narrower than that of the ancients. By focusing political energies on the preservation of life and its comforts, Hobbes helps to institute the proposal made earlier by Machiavelli : that politics should satisfy certain basic, morally neutral needs rather than aim to organize us around contentious principles. Hobbes emphasizes several ideas that have become central to modern politics and modern political science. He argues that human beings are not naturally social or political, that the state of nature is a state of war, and that we must self-consciously create a government that is based on mutual consent and that presupposes a fundamental equality among its members. These ideas are most comprehensively set forth in the Leviathan (1651), which text serves as the basis for this introduction to Hobbes’s thought.

Hobbes’s Political Science

Hobbes’s claim to found the first true political science should be understood against the background of the political thinkers he seeks to supplant, chiefly Aristotle . Hobbes is dissatisfied with the wisdom Aristotle claims to gain from considering multiple opinions about the good, remarking that hundreds of years of philosophical conversation have made no discernible progress on this question. Hobbes aims rather to elaborate a definitive and unambiguous science of the political good. Indeed, he argues that reading Aristotle serves no purpose but to justify the ambitions of rebellious young men.

Because we can know completely and with certainty only what we make and control, Hobbes gives an account of political order that portrays it as a self-conscious construction, an artifice we craft to remove ourselves from a pre-political state of nature. In order to achieve the exact knowledge for which he aims, Hobbes must limit his scientific claims to the implications that can be deduced from this decision to institute a political order, or “commonwealth.” His political science proper therefore constitutes only the section of the Leviathan that concerns the “consequences” that follow from this choice, namely, the rights and duties of the sovereign and of the subjects that are necessary to maintain this basic political agreement. This choice, however, follows upon our passions and our speech, especially our calling “good” the object of our desires, and pleasure the appearance of it.

The State of Nature

Hobbes begins his discussion with a description of human passions and speech, our basic motions. Following this, Hobbes develops his account of the state of nature from the claim that human beings are naturally equal. By this he means that each individual possesses the natural right to preserve himself, and furthermore the natural right to claim all things, or seek all power, that he judges necessary to this end. Moreover, Hobbes writes, in the state of nature we are, for practical purposes, equal in physical and mental capacity, since no one is strong or smart enough to defend himself with certainty against the threats that arise from the efforts of other individuals to preserve themselves.

According to Hobbes, this rough equality of ability leads each person to have an equal hope of acquiring good things for himself. As individuals strive to accumulate goods, they compete with each other, and consequently create an atmosphere of distrust. The attempt to acquire things, and to preserve them from the encroachments of others, causes us to try to dominate and control those around us. Furthermore, Hobbes observes, some people care particularly to be known as that sort who can dominate—they are vainglorious or prideful individuals who are unhappy if they are not recognized as superior.

These three things—competition, distrust, and the desire for glory—throw humankind into a state of war, which is for Hobbes the natural condition of human life, the situation that exists whenever natural passions are unrestrained. This state of war should be distinguished from wars as we usually experience them, for in the natural state of war every individual faces every other individual as an enemy; it is the “war of every man against every man.” The total absence of collaboration makes us miserable, and renders life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Hobbes’s description of the state of nature proposes that what human beings want above all is to preserve their lives and their goods, and what they fear above all is violence at the hands of others. This desire to preserve ourselves against the threat of violent death is the core of Hobbesian psychology. Hobbes suggests that his account will be ratified by honest introspection—after all, why else would we lock our doors at night?

The Social Contract

Once the misery of the natural condition becomes clear, it is evident that something must be done to change it. The first step is for individuals to decide to seek peace and to make the arrangements necessary to attain and preserve it. It becomes clear that the only way to have peace is for each individual to give up his natural right to acquire and preserve everything in whatever manner he sees fit.

As Hobbes stipulates, this must be a collective endeavor, since it only makes sense for an individual to give up his right to attack others if everyone else agrees to do the same. He calls this collective renunciation of each individual’s right to all things the “social contract.” The social contract inverts the state of nature while also building upon some key passions responsible for the state of nature: it amounts to a more intelligent way to preserve oneself and safely acquire goods.

Hobbes presents the social contract in the context of elaborating his “laws of nature,” which are the steps we must take to leave the state of nature. In calling these rules “laws of nature,” Hobbes significantly changes the traditional concept of natural law, in which nature offers moral guidance for human behavior. By contrast, Hobbes’s laws of nature are not obligatory in his state of nature, since, as he makes clear, seeking peace and keeping contracts in the state of nature would be self-destructive and absurd. In other words, acting against the laws of nature cannot simply be called unnatural or unjust—for Hobbes, nothing is naturally just, unjust, or blameworthy. Justice only exists as a convention, in the context of a civil society.

The Leviathan, or the Sovereign

Particularly because there is no natural sanction for justice, we need to institute some guarantee that everyone involved in the social contract will keep his word. Hobbes argues that individuals require a “visible power to keep them in awe,” to remind them of the purpose of the social contract and to force them, for fear of punishment, to keep their promises. This power must also be sufficient to keep in check the yearning for superiority of those who desire honor or glory. Hobbes calls the power necessary to transform the desire for a social contract into a commonwealth the sovereign, the Leviathan, or the “king of the proud.”

The sovereign power is created when each individual surrenders his private strength to a single entity, which thereby acquires the means to keep everyone in obedience. Every individual must also surrender his private opinion about public issues to the sovereign—for to have sufficient power to safeguard the contract, the sovereign must have the authority to decide what is necessary to keep it, and what constitutes a transgression of it.

The relation of the sovereign to the subject is not a contract. Rather, as Hobbes makes clear, the individual must understand his will to be identical with the sovereign will, since one who desires peace must logically will whatever is necessary for peace to be maintained. The “real unity” that the subjects and the sovereign comprise is dramatically expressed in the picture found on the cover of the Leviathan, in which one finds a huge figure literally composed of small individuals.

Although it is commonly assumed that the Leviathan is a king, Hobbes makes clear that the sovereign power can be composed of one person, several, or many—in other words, the Leviathan can equally well describe a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a democracy. The only requirement that Hobbes sets for sovereignty is that the entity has absolute power to defend the social contract and decide what is necessary for its defense.

Religion in the Commonwealth

One power that Hobbes insists the sovereign must possess is the authority to determine the public observance of religion. In Hobbes’s opinion, religion can be one of the chief threats to public peace, since it can validate authorities other than those designated by the sovereign. Hobbes is concerned both with Church authorities who make spiritual or moral claims with political intent, and also with the appeal to private conscience, which Hobbes argues is essentially the claim that an individual opinion should take priority over the common agreement represented by the political sovereign.

Hobbes attempts to counter the religious threat to public peace by drawing a strict distinction between private belief and public worship, and then attempting to render private belief politically ineffectual while submitting the form of public worship to the decision of the sovereign. Hobbes tries to make private belief politically neutral by encouraging skepticism: his account of the human mind makes us doubtful of what we know, and his reading of Scripture emphasizes the passages that insist on the mysteriousness of God’s will. Hobbes ultimately pares back Christianity to the personal belief that “Jesus is the Christ,” who will come—in some future time—to reign on earth. In the meantime, Hobbes insists, we should follow Romans 13 in recognizing that all authority comes from God, and obey the civil sovereign.

Hobbes likens the obedience a subject owes the sovereign to that of a monk to the pope. Yet there is a glaring difference: in the Hobbesian commonwealth, subjects owe only outward obedience to the commands of the sovereign. Subjects must be allowed to believe whatever they want (in part because persecution would unnecessarily disturb public peace), as long as they do not try to influence public argument with their personal beliefs.

Hobbes, Liberalism, and Modern Politics

Hobbes’s emphasis on the absolute power of the Leviathan sovereign seems to put his political thought at odds with liberal theory, in which politics is devoted to the protection of individual rights. Hobbes nonetheless laid the foundation for the liberal view. His concept of the state of nature grounds politics in the individual’s desire to preserve his life and his goods, and stipulates that the role of government is to serve these ends. Happiness or “felicity” is continual success in obtaining what we desire. For Hobbes, the individual has no natural duties toward others or to the common good; obligations are taken up only as necessary means to one’s own ends. Furthermore, Hobbes makes clear that the individual retains his natural right to preserve himself even after entering the commonwealth—he has no obligation to submit himself to capital punishment or likely death in war. While Hobbes has a much more limited understanding of individual rights than liberal theorists, his political science launches the argument that the individual has an inviolable right by nature, and also suggests that politics exists to help further the individual’s pursuit of his own happiness. Hobbes begins the liberal notion of representative government: government represents but does not rule us; its duty is to make our lives and acquisitions safe, not to form our souls.

Not long after Hobbes’s death, John Locke used many of the elements of Hobbes’s thought to develop the first full account of modern political liberalism. Although Locke takes pains to distance himself from Hobbes, Hobbes’s influence can be seen in Locke’s account of the state of nature, in his argument that the origin of all legitimate government lies in the consent of the governed, and in his view that the political community should aim to serve basic, common needs (Locke makes the preservation of property central). Through Locke, Hobbes indirectly influenced the founders of the United States, who, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, proclaim a new kind of politics based on equality and consent, in which government serves relatively limited and popular aims.

Hobbes’s political ideas aroused much controversy in his time, and they continue to be contentious. Some disagree with Hobbes’s claim that politics should be viewed primarily as an instrument to serve self-interest, and side with Aristotle in thinking that politics serves both basic needs and higher ends. On this view, Hobbes’s attempt to divert public debate from tackling controversial but fundamental questions hampers our pursuit of wisdom, happiness, and excellence. Others argue that Hobbes’s systematic focus on achievable goals has made possible the security and prosperity that those in modern Western nations enjoy, and furthermore that these conditions give us the leisure and peace to pursue knowledge and excellence in private life. In either case, Hobbes’s contribution to the framework of the modern world makes a study of his work important to understanding our political horizons.

For further introductory reading, see also:

Lawrence Burns, “ Thomas Hobbes ,” in  History of Political Philosophy , Eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, Chicago: 1987.

Richard Tuck,   Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford: 2002.

• Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a philosopher from England who is best known for his political philosophy works. Much of Hobbes’ philosophy centered on ideals like the natural equality of men, the right of an individual, the artificial character of political orders, and a liberal interpretation of the law which leaves human beings free will to do what the law does not forbid explicitly.

Early Life and Education

Hobbes was born in 1588 in Westport, England. He went to school at the Westport Church and the University of Oxford from where he graduated. Thomas followed his own curriculum when he was at the university and was recommended by Sir James as a tutor for the son of William Cavendish.

Hobbes’ Career

Hobbes was exposed to European critical and scientific methods. His scholarly efforts were aimed at careful studies of classic Latin and Greek authors. The outcome of this was his great translation of the Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War . It was his first translation from a Greek manuscript into English. He continued tutoring as he expanded his knowledge in philosophy which awakened his curiosity over several key philosophical debates.

Hobbes and Philosophy

The first area of study for Hobbes was in the physical momentum and physical doctrine of motion. His first scheme was to work on a systematic doctrine that would show how physical phenomena are universally explicable in motion. In his research, he singled out man from nature and plants.

In another treatise, Thomas showed the specific body motions that were involved in the output of peculiar phenomena of knowledge, affections, sensations and passions where man came into relation with man. He finally considered how men moved to enter into the society in his final treatise. He proposed bringing together the phenomena of state, body, and man.

Hobbes’ Publications and Works

Hobbes also extended his work to the third section of his publications by the name De Cive , which was completed in 1641. It was received well and it included lines of arguments which were repeated a decade later. He returned to work on the first sections of his previous works and published Tractatus Opticus which contained scientific tracts.

In 1642, Thomas became a mathematical instructor to a young Prince of Wales named Charles. In 1658, he published his final section of the philosophical system, completing his scheme that he had planned for over 20 years.

Hobbes’ Legacy

Hobbes is credited with being the founder of the modern political philosophy. Hobbes’ understanding of people as being motion and matter and obeying similar physical laws as other motion and matter still remains influential.

His account on human nature as cooperation that is self interested and of the political communities as being based on a social contract remains a major topic in political philosophy.

Hobbes died in 1679 after suffering a bladder disorder. He is interred in the St. John Baptist Church in England.

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• Science & Math
• Sociology & Philosophy
• Law & Politics
• Thomas Hobbes: Biography & Contributions
• Hobbes’ father (a vicar) abandoned the family when Hobbes was young
• Graduated from Magdalen Hall 1608
• Tutor to young William Cavendish, with whom, he travelled through continental Europe
• While spending time in Paris, Hobbes began to consider himself a philosopher
• Wrote The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic while in Britain
• Fled to France after the Parliamentarian victory in Britain
• While in France, he wrote Leviathan (1651)
• Returned to a (forced) partial-retirement in England after publishing Leviathan
• Died in 1679, uttering the words “A great leap in the dark.”
• On of the first modern examples of the social contract theory, as well as the state of nature
• Was written as a strong supporter of absolutism
• Consists of four parts building onto each other 1. Of Man 2. Of Common-wealth 3. Of a Christian Commonwealth 4. Of the Kingdom of Darkness

Part 1: Of Man

• Outlines the importance of perception for humans -What is “Good” is simply something that an individual likes, while “Evil” is something that an individual hates.
• Hobbes describes man as selfish, greedy and only concerned with their own survival
• Without society, man is a “state of nature” or “war”
• Hobbes outlines three reasons for conflict during a state of nature: Competition, Diffidence and Glory.
• Also highlights Hobbes’ laws of nature: 1. Man should seek “peace”, but can use all rights while in a state of war. 2. To obtain a state of “peace” an individual must give up some rights (The Social Contract)

Part 2: Of Commonwealth

• The reason for a commonwealth is “… the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life…”
• Outlines the rights of the sovereign -Made to protect the sovereign and the state of “peace”
• Speculates that there are only three true forms of commonwealth: Aristocracy, Democracy, and Monarchy -All other versions of such are a matter of perception (e.g. an Oligarchy)
• States that a monarchy is the best system because: -Corruption is less likely because the success of the sovereign is dependent on the success of the people -It removes morals from decision making (Legal Positivism)
• Suggests that taxation should be equivalent to how useful a person is to the commonwealth

Part 3 & 4: Of Christian Commonwealth and Of The Kingdom of Darkness

• Religion is a matter of the state and sovereign
• It is impossible to tell who truly has a divine right to rule
• Therefore civil power trumps religious power
• “Kingdom of Darkness” is the ignorance of knowledge and misinterpretation of religious text
• Hobbes throws his support behind protestant ideas
• Hobbes scolds the church for it’s denial of sciences
• Only in matters of civil disorder should they be stopped

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Thomas Hobbes summary

Learn about the early life of thomas hobbes and his notable work leviathan.

Thomas Hobbes , (born April 5, 1588, Westport, Wiltshire, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire), English philosopher and political theorist. The son of a vicar who abandoned his family, Hobbes was raised by his uncle. After graduating from the University of Oxford he became a tutor and traveled with his pupil in Europe, where he engaged Galileo in philosophical discussions on the nature of motion. He later turned to political theory, but his support for absolutism put him at odds with the rising antiroyalist sentiment of the time. He fled to Paris in 1640, where he tutored the future King Charles II of England. In Paris he wrote his best-known work, Leviathan (1651), in which he attempted to justify the absolute power of the sovereign on the basis of a hypothetical social contract in which individuals seek to protect themselves from one another by agreeing to obey the sovereign in all matters. Hobbes returned to Britain in 1651 after the death of Charles I . In 1666 Parliament threatened to investigate him as an atheist. His works are considered important statements of the nascent ideas of liberalism as well as of the longstanding assumptions of absolutism characteristic of the times.