Thomas Hobbes
1 book analyzed
Biography
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was born in Westport, Wiltshire, reportedly prematurely owing to his mother's fear of the Spanish Armada. He attended Magdalen Hall, Oxford, graduating in 1608 and entering the household of William Cavendish as tutor. The Cavendish patronage supported him for most of his life. He traveled Europe repeatedly, meeting Galileo in Florence in 1636 and connecting with Marin Mersenne's Parisian circle. Hobbes's intellectual turn from classical humanism to deductive political philosophy came in the late 1620s and 1630s, prompted by Euclid's Elements. The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (1640) was his first mature political work. Fearing political danger as an advocate of royal prerogative, he fled to Paris in late 1640 and remained for eleven years. In Paris he published De Cive (1642, revised 1647) and served as mathematics tutor to the future Charles II from 1646 to 1648. He engaged in correspondence with Mersenne's circle and began composing Leviathan in late 1649, publishing in London in April 1651. When its pragmatic 'de facto' theory alienated the exiled Stuart court, Hobbes returned to England in early 1652, submitting to the Council of State. Hobbes lived through the Restoration (1660) under Charles II's protection, receiving a £100 annual pension. Leviathan was investigated by a parliamentary committee in 1666. He was not formally charged but was effectively banned from publishing new philosophical work in English. Behemoth (completed 1668) was not printed during his lifetime; his English translations of Homer (ages 86-88) were allowed. He died at Hardwick Hall, December 4, 1679. His last reported words: 'I am about to take a great leap in the dark.'