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Portrait of Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy

Thomas Hobbes

1588–1679 · English

Social contract theory; materialism

English philosopher whose Leviathan, written against the background of the English Civil War, founded modern social contract theory. He argued that without a sovereign power to keep all in awe, human life would be a war of every man against every man, and he developed a thoroughly materialist, mechanistic account of nature and mind.

How to spot them

  • ▸Life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
  • ▸Leviathan; the frontispiece of a giant crowned figure made up of tiny people
  • ▸Bellum omnium contra omnes – the war of all against all
  • ▸Born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in the Armada year of 1588

Key works

The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640)

First statement of his political philosophy, circulated in manuscript in support of royal power

De Cive (On the Citizen) (1642)

Latin treatise on the state and religion; its preface speaks of the bellum omnium contra omnes

Leviathan (1651)

"The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil": the case for a sovereign created by covenant

Behemoth (written c. 1668 (published 1681))

Dialogue history of the causes of the English Civil War

Key ideas

  • In the state of nature, with no common power, there is a war of every man against every man, and life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"
  • Rational, self-interested individuals escape this by covenanting with one another to transfer their rights to a sovereign
  • The sovereign's power must be absolute and undivided; subjects nonetheless keep the right to defend their own lives
  • Laws of nature are rational precepts of self-preservation, the first being to seek peace
  • Materialism and mechanism: everything that exists, including thought, is body in motion
  • There is no justice or injustice in the state of nature; these exist only once a commonwealth has been established

Quick-fire facts

  • •In his verse autobiography he says his mother gave birth to twins, himself and fear, as the Spanish Armada approached
  • •Leviathan's title comes from the sea monster in the Book of Job; its famous frontispiece was engraved by Abraham Bosse
  • •He was for decades tutor and secretary to the Cavendish family, Earls of Devonshire, and died at Hardwick Hall
  • •In Parisian exile he taught mathematics to the future Charles II
  • •He published an English translation of Thucydides (1629) and, late in life, of Homer
  • •He wrote the third set of objections to Descartes's Meditations
  • •As a young man he worked for a time as an amanuensis to Francis Bacon
  • •He waged a long, losing controversy with the mathematician John Wallis, having claimed to square the circle

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources