Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

English philosopher who suggested surrendering some independence to the state to gain a greater degree of national security. The son of an English clergyman, Thomas Hobbes was brought up by a wealthy uncle. His father had engaged in a brawl outside his parish church and fled to London to escape prosecution. Under the tutelage of his uncle, the young Hobbes acquired a thorough education that was capped by study at Magdalen Hall, Oxford University.

In 1608, Hobbes left Oxford and assumed a position tutoring the son of William Cavendish, earl of Devonshire. Hobbes was released from his position when the earl died in 1626, but he found similar employment with Sir Gervase Clinton. Sometime after 1629, he returned to the service of the Cavendish family and remained there until 1640, when political turmoil in England caused him to flee to France.

During his years as a tutor, Hobbes made two shorter trips to the European continent in 1610 and 1629, and he made one extended excursion between 1634 and 1637. On the last of these trips, he made contact with a circle of natural philosophers and mathematicians in Paris. He also traveled to Florence to visit the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, who was under house arrest after his condemnation by the Roman Inquisition. Hobbes thus acquired contacts with the major figures who were working on behalf of the movement that would eventually be called the scientific revolution.

When Hobbes returned to France in 1640, he became a close friend of Pierre Gassend, the French champion of epicurean philosophy. During these years in France, Hobbes published his major works on natural philosophy and political theory, including De Cive (On the Citizen) in 1642, De Corpore (On the Body) in 1650, and Leviathan in 1651.

Leviathan, Hobbes's theory of political absolutism, earned its author notoriety that lasted long beyond his lifetime. Hobbes developed his theory from two assumptions about human nature, both loosely derived from a mechanical, materialistic view of humanity. He [Page 325]believed that people are moved (like matter) by two emotions: the desire for power and the fear of death. In the natural primitive state, the desire for power causes people to lead lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But the fear of death leads them to join together by means of a social contract into a political society or commonwealth. Hobbes called this commonwealth a Leviathan, that is, an artificial machine (in contrast to the natural human machine).

Most social-contract theory had supported claims for representative government, but Hobbes turned the idea of the social contract on its head, using it to prove the necessity of undivided sovereignty (absolutism) in any state. In other words, political power should not be divided between king and parliament or between various factions in a republic. Instead, power should be concentrated in one individual to prevent the formation of warring factions and the outbreak of civil war.

Hobbes, of course, was reacting to the English civil wars, whose outbreak in 1640 had caused him to seek exile. He believed that a strong, central monarchy was the only political form that could guarantee peace and prosperity to his nation.

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