Political Figures
Thomas Hobbes
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English philosopher whose Leviathan (1651) is a founding text of social contract theory. He argued that without a powerful sovereign authority, human life in the state of nature would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, and that rational individuals would agree to submit to strong central authority to escape it. He died in 1679.
Facts
Cross-Tradition Connections
Advocated
Hobbes conceived sovereignty as absolute authority transferred from the people to a sovereign through a social contract (Leviathan, 1651).
Hobbes' Leviathan (1651) is the founding modern statement of social contract theory, grounding an absolute sovereign in individual consent.
Drafted
Leviathan, Documents Hobbes wrote Leviathan during his exile in Paris, publishing it in 1651 after returning to England.
Founded
Hobbes' Leviathan (1651) described the commonwealth as an artificial person created when individuals covenant to transfer their natural right of self-governance to a sovereign.
Influenced
Locke took up Hobbes's social contract framework while rejecting its absolutist conclusion, arguing consent could be withdrawn from a government that broke the trust.
Influenced By
Grotius' secularized natural-law foundation for sovereignty is the acknowledged starting point Hobbes worked from and against in Leviathan.
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