Hobbes, Thomas

Hobbes, Thomas (hŏbz), 1588–1679, English philosopher, grad. Magdalen College, Oxford, 1608. For many years a tutor in the Cavendish family, Hobbes took great interest in mathematics, physics, and the contemporary rationalism. On journeys to the Continent he established friendly relations with many learned men, including Galileo and Gassendi. In 1640, after his political writings had brought him into disfavor with the parliamentarians, he went to France (where he was tutor to the exiled Prince Charles). His work, however, aroused the antagonism of the English group in France, and his thorough materialism offended the churchmen, so that in 1651 he felt impelled to return to England, where he was able to live peacefully. Among his important works, which appeared in several revisions under different titles (see Sir W. Molesworth's edition of the complete works, 11 vol., 1839–45), are De Cive (1642), Leviathan (1651), De Corpore Politico (1650), De Homine (1658), and Behemoth (1680). In the Leviathan, Hobbes developed his political philosophy. He argued from a mechanistic view that life is simply the motions of the organism and that man is by nature a selfishly individualistic animal at constant war with all other men. In a state of nature, men are equal in their self-seeking and live out lives which are "nasty, brutish, and short." Fear of violent death is the principal motive which causes men to create a state by contracting to surrender their natural rights and to submit to the absolute authority of a sovereign. Although the power of the sovereign derived originally from the people—a challenge to the doctrine of the divine right of kings—the sovereign's power is absolute and not subject to the law. Temporal power is also always superior to ecclesiastical power. Though Hobbes favored a monarchy as the most efficient form of sovereignty, his theory could apply equally well to king or parliament. His political philosophy led to investigations by other political theorists, e.g., Locke, Spinoza, and Rousseau, who formulated their own radically different theories of the social contract.

Bibliography

See biographies by J. L. Stephen (1934, repr. 1968), C. H. Hinnant (1977), and T. Surrell (1986); studies by T. A. Sprague, Jr. (1973), J. W. N. Watkins (rev. ed. 1973), W. Von Leyden (1982), and J. Hampton (1988).

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Hobbes, Thomas

Thomas Hobbes, detail of an oil painting by John Michael Wright; in the National Portrait Gallery, …

(credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born April 5, 1588, Westport, Wiltshire, Eng.—died Dec. 4, 1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire) English philosopher and political theorist. The son of a vicar who abandoned his family, Hobbes was raised by his uncle. After graduating from the University of Oxford he became a tutor and traveled with his pupil in Europe, where he engaged Galileo in philosophical discussions on the nature of motion. He later turned to political theory, but his support for absolutism put him at odds with the rising antiroyalist sentiment of the time. He fled to Paris in 1640, where he tutored the future King Charles II of England. In Paris he wrote his best-known work, Leviathan (1651), in which he attempted to justify the absolute power of the sovereign on the basis of a hypothetical social contract in which individuals seek to protect themselves from one another by agreeing to obey the sovereign in all matters. Hobbes returned to Britain in 1651 after the death of Charles I. In 1666 Parliament threatened to investigate him as an atheist. His works are considered important statements of the nascent ideas of liberalism as well as of the longstanding assumptions of absolutism characteristic of the times.

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Hobbes, Thomas 

Born Apr. 5, 1588, in Malmesbury; died Dec. 4, 1679, in Hardwick. English materialist philosopher.

Hobbes was the son of a vicar. He graduated from Oxford in 1608 and became a tutor in the aristocratic family of W. Cavendish, later earl of Devonshire, with which he remained associated to the end of his life. The development of Hobbes’ thought was considerably influenced by F. Bacon, Galileo, P. Gassendi, and R. Descartes. His principal works include the philosophical trilogy De corpore (1655), De homine (1658), and De cive (1642), and Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil (1651; Russian translation, 1936).

Working along the same lines as Bacon, Hobbes “destroyed the theistic prejudices of Baconian materialism” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 2, p. 144). In his polemic with Descartes, Hobbes rejected the existence of a special thinking substance, arguing that a rational thing is a material entity. Hobbes created the first complete system of mechanistic materialism, corresponding to the character and demands of the natural science of his day. For Hobbes, geometry and mechanics are the ideal models for scientific thought in general. He conceives of nature as the sum total of extended bodies differing from each other in magnitude, figure, position, and motion. Motion is interpreted mechanically; as movement from one point to another. Qualities perceived through the senses are regarded by Hobbes not as properties of things themselves but as forms of perception of things. Hobbes differentiated between extension, an inherent property of bodies, and space, an image created by reason (a phantasm), as well as between the objectively real movement of bodies and time, the subjective image of movement. He distinguished between two methods of cognition—the logical deduction of rationalist “mechanics” and the induction of empirical “physics.”

In Hobbes’ view the state resulted from a contract between men, which put an end to the pregovernment natural condition of “war of all against all.” He adhered to the idea of the primordial equality of men. Individual citizens voluntarily limited their rights and liberty in favor of the state, whose task is to ensure peace and security. Hobbes exalted the role of the state, which he held to be absolutely sovereign. On the question of the form of the state, Hobbes’ sympathies were on the side of monarchy. Defending the necessity of the submission of church to state, he considered it essential to preserve religion as an ideological weapon of state power for keeping the people in check.

Hobbes’ ethics stem from his view of “human nature” as unchanging and concupiscible. He believed the basis of morality to be “natural law”—the striving for self-preservation and for the satisfaction of needs. Virtue is determined by the rational understanding of what facilitates or hinders the attainment of the good. Moral duty coincides with civic responsibilities arising out of the social contract.

Hobbes’ teachings greatly influenced the later development of philosophy and social thought.

WORKS

Opera philosophica, quae latine scripsit …, vols. 1-5. Edited by W. Molesworth. London, 1839-45.
The English Works, vols. 1-11. Edited by W. Molesworth. London, 1839-45.
In Russian translation:
Izbr. soch., vols. 1-2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926.
Izbr. proizv., vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1964.

REFERENCES

Bykhovskii, B. E. “Psikhofizicheskoe uchenie T. Gobbsa.” Vestnik Komakademii, 1928, no. 26(2).
Cheskis, A. A. Tomas Gobbs. Moscow, 1929.
Pod znamenem marksizma, 1938, no. 6. (Articles by B. E. Bykhovskii, L. German, M. Petrosova, and D. Bikhdriker.)
Deborin, A. M. “Tomas Gobbs.” In his collection Ocherkipo istorii materializma 17-18 vv., Moscow-Leningrad, 1930.
Golosov, V. F. Ocherkipo istorii angliiskogo materializma 17-18 vv. Krasnoiarsk, 1958.
Tönnies, F. Th. Hobbes, der Mann und der Denker. Osterwieck, 1912.
Polin, R. Politique et philosophic chez Thomas Hobbes. Paris, 1952.
Peters, R. Hobbes. [London, 1956.]
Hobbes Studies. Edited by K. C. Brown. Oxford, 1965.
McNeilly, F. S. The Anatomy of Leviathan. New York-London, 1968.
Gauthier, D. P. The Logic of Leviathan. Oxford, 1969.

B. E. BYKHOVSKII