Thinker · TH-0404
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher whose Leviathan, written during the English Civil War, founded modern social contract theory. He argued that without a…
1588 – 1679 · Malmesbury, Oxford, Paris, London, Derbyshire
Traditions: Modern European
Schools: Social contract theory
Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher whose Leviathan, written during the English Civil War, founded modern social contract theory. He argued that without a common power people live in a state of nature that is a war of all against all, in which life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Rational individuals therefore have reason to authorise a sovereign to keep the peace. A thoroughgoing materialist, he also wrote on optics, geometry and human psychology, including an account of laughter as sudden glory.
Key ideas
- Without a common power to keep them in awe, people live in a condition of war of all against all.
- Political authority arises from an agreement to authorise a sovereign for the sake of peace and security.
- Everything that exists is body in motion, including human thought and passion.
- Laughter is a sudden glory arising from a sense of our own superiority.
Major works
- The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (1640)
- De Cive (1642)
- Leviathan (1651)
- De Corpore (1655)
In the conversation
- Debate Hobbes’s ‘sudden glory’ explains far more laughter than its critics admit
- Question How is Scanlon’s ‘reasonable rejection’ test different from asking what most people would agree to?
- Discussion Why does tax feel like theft to some of my clients and not to others?
- Question Why did Hobbes think sovereignty could not be divided?
- Question I’m a scientific realist and, after twenty-two years in the army, a political realist. Is that inconsistent?
- Debate “The best ruler is barely noticed” is compatible with abandonment, and the Legalists exploited exactly that
- Question Who is left out when morality is a bargain?
- Debate Ibn Khaldun’s question, what keeps power alive, matters more than Locke’s question of what justifies it
- Reading group Reading group: al-Mawardi’s Ordinances of Government, on the conditions of legitimate rule