Thomas Hobbes
Archetype: Materialist of Order
1588 to 1679 · England and Paris, France
“The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Do you think like Thomas Hobbes? Answer 44 to 132 statements and find out who, among 130 thinkers, has the way of thinking closest to yours.
Who was Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes lived through the English Civil War and spent years in exile in Paris. In Leviathan, he argued that without a strong government, human life would be a war of all against all. His theory of the social contract, based on fear and the search for security, founded modern political philosophy.
Core ideas
- Without a state, human life would be solitary, poor, brutal and short
- People make a contract and hand power to a sovereign in exchange for security
- The sovereign needs strong, indivisible power to prevent civil war
The tradition: Contractarian
A contractarian explains the state as the result of an agreement among people. Hobbes is the first great modern contractarian and defends a strong sovereign.
Learn more: Wikipedia
Books by Thomas Hobbes
Three ways in. Start with the first.
Where Thomas Hobbes stands on the 11 axes
Each axis runs from the first pole (−1) to the second (+1). These are the positions the test compares with your answers.
