Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English political philosopher. Hobbes was the son of a minor clergyman who subsequently abandoned his family. He became tutor to the exiled Prince of Wales, Charles Stuart, and lived under the patronage of the Cavendish family. Writing at a time of uncertainty and civil strife, precipitated by the English Revolution, Hobbes developed the first comprehensive theory of nature and human behaviour since Aristotle.

Hobbes’ major work Leviathan ([1651], 1968), defended absolutist government as the only alternative to anarchy and disorder. He portrayed life in a stateless society, the state of nature, as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, basing this upon the belief that human beings are essentially power-seeking and self-interested creatures. He argued that citizens have an unqualified obligation towards the state, on the grounds that to limit the power of government is to risk a descent into the state of nature. Any system of political rule, however tyrannical, is preferable to no rule at all. Hobbes thus provided a rationalist defence for absolutism; however, because he based authority upon consent and allowed that sovereign authority may take forms other than monarchy, he upset supporters of the divine right of kings. Hobbes’s pessimistic view of human nature and his emphasis upon the vital importance of authority had considerable impact upon conservative thought; but his individualist methodology and the use he made of social contract theory prefigured early liberalism.