Thomas Hobbes

E15651

Thomas Hobbes was a 17th-century English philosopher best known for his political theory of social contract and his seminal work "Leviathan," which argued for strong centralized authority to prevent societal chaos.

Jump to: Surface forms Statements Referenced by

Observed surface forms (1)

Surface form Occurrences
Hobbes 2

Statements (59)

Predicate Object
instanceOf author
early modern philosopher
human
philosopher
political philosopher
associatedEvent English Civil War
birthDate 1588-04-05
birthPlace Westport, Wiltshire, England
citizenship Kingdom of England
deathDate 1679-12-04
deathPlace Derbyshire
surface form: Derbyshire, England
education St Edmund Hall, Oxford
surface form: Magdalen Hall, Oxford
employer Cavendish family
era 17th-century philosophy
Age of Enlightenment precursor
familyName Thomas Hobbes self-linksurface differs
surface form: Hobbes
field legal philosophy
moral philosophy
natural philosophy
political theory
givenName Thomas
influenced Baruch Spinoza
Carl Schmitt
David Hume
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
modern political realism
influencedBy Aristotle
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
Niccolò Machiavelli
surface form: Machiavelli
knownFor concept of state of nature
defense of absolute sovereignty
pessimistic view of human nature
social contract theory
language English
mainInterest epistemology
ethics
metaphysics
philosophy of law
political philosophy
name Thomas Hobbes self-link
nationality English
notableWork De Cive
De Corpore
De Homine
Leviathan
philosophicalSchool materialism
mechanistic philosophy
social contract theory
publicationDateOfWork Leviathan 1651
religion Anglican background with heterodox views
subjectOf Hobbesian social contract
Hobbesian social contract
surface form: Hobbesian sovereignty
view argued for strong centralized authority to prevent civil war and chaos
argued that life in the state of nature is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'
defended a materialist account of reality
held that all phenomena, including thought, can be explained mechanically
held that political obligation arises from a social contract

Referenced by (14)

Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.

British Enlightenment associatedWith Thomas Hobbes
Empiricism associatedWith Thomas Hobbes
Halliwell Hobbes familyName Thomas Hobbes
this entity surface form: Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes familyName Thomas Hobbes self-linksurface differs
this entity surface form: Hobbes
Lucretius influenced Thomas Hobbes
Niccolò Machiavelli influenced Thomas Hobbes
Baruch Spinoza influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
George Croom Robertson influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
Hans Morgenthau influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
John Gray influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
John Locke influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
Samuel Pufendorf influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
Tractatus Politicus influencedBy Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes name Thomas Hobbes self-link