Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher and political theorist. One of the seminal figures of British empiricism, his major works, Leviathan (1651) and De Homine (1658,) expressed his principle of materialism and his concept of a social contract forming the basis of society.
Born in Westport, Wiltshire, Hobbes argued, “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.” Human submission to sovereign authority is influenced by materialism and self-interest, and that temporal power is superior to ecclesiastical power. Fear of death and the need for security are the psychological foundations both of worldly prudence and of civilization itself.
In 1666, Hobbes’s enemies in the clergy declared that the Plague and the Great Fire of London of 1665–66 revealed God’s wrath against England for harboring an atheist in Hobbes. The British Parliament wanted Hobbes’s Leviathan to be investigated for atheist tendencies. Hobbes was terrified of being branded a heretic—he burned many of his papers and decided to avoid publishing anything on overtly political subjects in the future. King Charles II, whom Hobbes had tutored earlier in life, interceded on his behalf and quashed the motion.
Hobbes’s theories of the social contract were explored and reformulated by such later political theorists as John Locke, Baruch Spinoza, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, ethics, and the physics of gases.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Hobbes
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Praise, Books
Desire to know why, and how—curiosity, which is a lust of the mind, that a perseverance of delight in the continued and indefatigable generation of knowledge—exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Knowledge, The Mind
A man’s conscience and his judgment is the same thing; and as the judgment, so also the conscience, may be erroneous.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Conscience
I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Last Words
Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion.
—Thomas Hobbes
Words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Words
There are very few so foolish that they had not rather govern themselves than be governed by others.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Government
There are few who need complain of the narrowness of their minds if they will only do their best with them.
—Thomas Hobbes
Understanding is nothing else than conception caused by speech.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Understanding
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Leisure, Philosophy
Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Laughter
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
—Thomas Hobbes
The original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had toward each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other.
—Thomas Hobbes
Topics: Fear
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
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Jeremy Bentham British Philosopher, Economist
Aristotle Ancient Greek Philosopher
David Hume Scottish Philosopher, Historian
Montesquieu French Political Philosopher