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Thomas Hobbes
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On this date in 1588, Thomas Hobbes was born prematurely on "Good Friday" in England, his birth precipitated by his mother's fear of the invasion of the Spanish Armada. Thomas was the precocious son of a ne'er-do-well parson. As a tutor, Hobbes made the "Grand Tour" of Europe three times, once meeting Galileo. Contemporary John Aubrey described Hobbes as "contemplative," and charitable, always carrying a pen and ink-horn in his cane, with a notebook handy so he could jot down ideas during daily constitutionals. Aubrey noted that Hobbes once wrote a poem in Latin hexameter and pantameter "on the encroachments of the clergy on the civil power," which contained over 500 verses. De Cive was published in 1642, and Leviathan in 1651, in which Hobbes proposed the idea that a "social contract" was necessary for civil peace.
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Thomas Hobbes was one of the first modern Western thinkers, the first in the line of British empiricists. He is ... known for his English verse translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. His writing provided a secular explanation of the political state, and denoted the departure in English philosophy from Scholasticism with its religious emphasis. Hobbes believed that understanding the psychology of individuals was necessary before one could develop an understanding of the state and government. He believed that humans are fearful and predatory, and must submit completely to the supremacy of the state in both secular and religious concerns. Hobbes asserted that there is a difference between knowledge and faith, which resulted in charges of atheistic tendencies.
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The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is perhaps the most complete materialist philosophy of the 17th century. Hobbes rejects Cartesian dualism and believes in the mortality of the soul. He rejects free will in favor of determinism, a determinism which treats freedom as being able to do what one desires. He rejects Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy in favor of the "new" philosophy of Galileo and Gassendi, which largely treats the world as matter in motion. Hobbes is perhaps most famous for his political philosophy. Men in a state of nature, that is a state without civil government, are in a war of all against all in which life is hardly worth living.
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Born prematurely on April 5, 1588, when his mother heard of the impending invasion of the Spanish Armada, Thomas Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins, myself and fear." His father was the vicar of Westport near Malmesbury in Gloucestershire. He abandoned his family to escape punishment for fighting with another clergyman "at the church door." Thereafter Thomas was raised and educated by an uncle. At local schools he became a proficient classicist, translating a Greek tragedy into Latin iambics by the time he was 14. From 1603 to 1608 he studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was bored by the prevailing philosophy of Aristotelianism.
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Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, adjoining Malmesbury in Wiltshire, on April 5, 1588. His father was the vicar of a parish. His uncle, who was a tradesman and alderman of Malmesbury, provided for Hobbes' education. When he was 14 years old he went to Magdalen Hall in Oxford to study, already an excellent student of Latin and Greek. He left Oxford in 1608, and became the private tutor for the eldest son of Lord Cavendish of Hardwick (later known as the Earl of Devonshire). He traveled with his pupil in 1610 to France, Italy, and Germany.
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Thomas Hobbes was born in Wiltshire, England on 5 April 1588 (some sources say Malmesbury[1]). His father, the vicar of Charlton and Westport, abandoned his three children to the care of an older brother, Francis. Hobbes was educated at Westport church from the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school and then to a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate of Oxford University. Hobbes was a good pupil, and around 1603 he went up to Hertford College, Oxford. The principal was a puritan called John Wilkinson, and he had some influence on Hobbes.
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Thomas Hobbes