Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

Title page of Hobbes's Leviathan or the matter, form, and power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote this treatise in 1651, believing that without the fear inherent in absolute rule, the natural state of the human race is selfish and moved only by a need for power.

English political philosopher and the first thinker since Aristotle to attempt to develop a comprehensive theory of nature, including human behaviour. In Leviathan (1651), he advocates absolutist government as the only means of ensuring order and security; he saw this as deriving from the social contract.

Hobbes analysed everything, including human behaviour, in terms of matter and motion. He is now best remembered for his political philosophy, in which he defended absolute sovereignty as the only way to prevent life from being ‘nasty, brutish, and short’, as he alleged it was in a state of nature. He based this absolute sovereignty on a social contract among individuals, but the sovereign has duties only to God.