Thomas Hobbes

Article abstract: A pioneer of modern political principles, Hobbes wrote the English language’s first great work of political philosophy.

Early Life

There is a self-generated folklore regarding Thomas Hobbes’s birth and the relation of that birth to his political ideas. According to Hobbes’s autobiography, his mother was much alarmed by the approaching Spanish Armada, an alarm that led to his premature birth on April 5, 1588. Thus, Hobbes claimed to have been born with an especially keen aversion to violence; he and fear were born twins, according...

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