Thomas Hobbes And His Contributions

Thomas Hobbes recounted that on the day of his birth in 1588, his mother learned that the Spanish Armada had set sail to attack England. This news terrified Hobbes’s mother that she went into labor prematurely.

Hobbes was born in Malmesbury in 1588. He studied at Oxford University. And because he was a tutor for a noble English family, he had opportunities for travel. In France he was so fortunate he knew Mersenne, the great friend of Descartes. It was, in fact, Mersenne who induced Hobbes to write his critical observations on the Meditations of Descartes. At Florence he came into contact with the thought of Galileo.

Hobbes wrote one of the greatest philosophical works – this was published three times with three different titles. The first was De Cive (On the Social and Political Organism). Hobbes developed this and later published it under the title De Corpore (On the Body, The Leviathan). The final development was his De Homine (On Man). Among these three, it's the Leviathan that's considered his masterpiece of all time.