Thomas Hobbes – Author Biography
Early Life
Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588, in Westport, near Malmesbury, England — prematurely, his mother frightened into labor by news of the Spanish Armada. He joked that he and fear were born twins. Educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, he became tutor to the Cavendish family, a connection that gave him access to Europe’s intellectual elite, including Galileo and Descartes.
Career
Hobbes spent decades as a scholar, translator, and philosopher in aristocratic households, fleeing to Paris during the English Civil War. There he wrote his masterpiece, Leviathan (1651) — published just as the war ended — which argued that only absolute sovereign power could rescue humanity from anarchy. The book made him famous and notorious; he spent his later years defending himself against charges of atheism while continuing to write on law, history, and mathematics. He died on December 4, 1679, at 91.
Major Works
Leviathan (1651), De Cive (1642), De Corpore (1655), Behemoth (written 1668, published 1682) — his history of the Civil War — and his translations of Thucydides and Homer.
Writing Style and Themes
Hobbes wrote in vigorous, aphoristic English prose — “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” is his. His great argument: in the state of nature, humans are equal in vulnerability and driven by competition, so life is a war of all against all; rational people therefore surrender liberty to a sovereign in exchange for security — the social contract. His themes — power, fear, authority, and the artificial nature of the state — founded modern political philosophy.
Legacy
Hobbes is the founder of modern political philosophy and the social-contract tradition that runs through Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls. Leviathan remains one of the most influential books ever written, shaping political science, international relations (realism), and debates about authority and liberty that continue today.
