Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
	Portrait by John Michael Wright, c. 1669–70
Born	5 April 1588; Westport, Wiltshire, England
Died	4 December 1679 (aged 91); Derbyshire, England
Education	Magdalen Hall, Oxford; St John's College, Cambridge (BA);
Notable work	De Cive (1647); Leviathan (1651); De Corpore (1655); Behemoth (1681);
Era	17th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	British empiricism; Classical realism; Corpuscularianism; Descriptive egoism; Determinism; English Renaissance; Materialism; Legal positivism; Natural law; Nominalism; Social contract;
Main interests	Political philosophy, history, ethics, geometry
Notable ideas	Social contract; State of nature; Bellum omnium contra omnes;
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Thomas Hobbes (/hɒbz/ HOBZ; 5 April 1588 – 20 December 1679) was an English philosopher. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy.

Hobbes was born and raised in Malmesbury and attended the University of Oxford before graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1608. He then became a tutor to the Cavendish family. After returning to England from France in 1641, Hobbes witnessed the destruction and brutality of the English Civil War from 1642 to 1651 between Parliamentarians and Royalists, which heavily influenced his advocacy for governance by an absolute sovereign in Leviathan. Aside from social contract theory, Leviathan also popularized ideas such as the state of nature ("war of all against all") and laws of nature.

His other major works include the trilogy De Cive (1642), De Corpore (1655), and De Homine (1658) as well as the posthumous work Behemoth (1681).

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