Born: 4/5/1588   Died: 12/4/1679

Hobbes is considered the founder of English moral and political philosophy and the first political thinker to propose a purely secular theory of political authority. In his most famous work, the Leviathan, Hobbes famously argued that life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." To avoid this fate, we enter into a social contract beneath a sovereign and absolute government (and Hobbes prefers a monarchy) to which we give up just enough of our rights to ensure peace and social cooperation. Hobbes also published translations of Thucydides and Homer and wrote a trilogy (De Corpore, De Cive, De Homine) whose topics include optics, human nature, religion, language, logic, law, and political and moral philosophy. He also wrote on aesthetics, defended a compatibilist account of free will, and developed a materialist explanation of human psychology that brought him into disputes with Descartes. Hobbes has been very influential in political philosophy, and his ideas have helped to shape contemporary rational choice theory.