Thomas Hobbes
English philosopher whose Leviathan proposed an absolute sovereign as the cure for human conflict Show bio
Bio
Thomas Hobbes arrived prematurely as the Spanish Armada threatened, and he called fear his twin. He grew up in a wealthy uncle's care after a fight forced his father to leave.
Hobbes spent decades as a tutor to a noble family, traveling Europe and visiting Galileo. He returned to a divided England in 1637 but fled to Paris three years later. Hobbes answered the brutal English Civil War with Leviathan, his case for an all-powerful ruler.
He described life without government as a "war of all against all." Hobbes is now counted among the founders of modern political philosophy.