Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, England, in 1588. Educated at Oxford, he became a tutor to the Cavendish family, which connected him to intellectual circles and European thinkers. The English Civil War profoundly shaped his political philosophy, leading him to write Leviathan (1651), his magnum opus. In it, he argued that humans in a state of nature live in constant fear and conflict, and thus rationally consent to a social contract that grants absolute power to a sovereign—the 'Leviathan'—to maintain peace and order. Hobbes also made contributions to ethics, history, and geometry, and his materialist views on human nature and government laid foundations for modern political science. Though controversial in his time for his secular approach, his work remains essential reading in political theory and philosophy.