As conflict between King Charles I and Parliament escalated, Thomas Hobbes left England for Paris in 1640, later describing himself as among the first to flee. The move placed him inside a major European intellectual network and gave him the distance to develop a systematic theory of political order under crisis conditions.
Hobbes finished De Cive in November 1641, outlining key ideas later developed in Leviathan, including the need for a strong civil authority to secure peace. Its completion just before open war in England matters because it shows Hobbes was responding to deep political tensions, not only to later battlefield outcomes.
De Cive was published in Latin in 1642, as fighting spread across the British Isles. The book gave Hobbes an early platform for social-contract arguments: people leave a dangerous “state of nature” by authorizing a sovereign power to enforce rules and protect them.
In August 1642, Charles I raised an army against Parliament, marking the start of sustained civil war in England (often grouped within the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms). The breakdown of trust and authority that the wars revealed became the real-world background for Hobbes’s later argument that peace requires a single, decisive sovereign.
While in Paris, Hobbes became mathematics tutor to the future Charles II, connecting him directly to royalist politics in exile. This relationship later complicated the reception of Leviathan, since the book’s logic supported obedience to whichever power effectively kept order, not necessarily a particular dynasty.
Charles I was executed on 1649-01-30 after conviction by a High Court established by Parliament, an unprecedented political rupture for England. The event reinforced Hobbes’s fear that divided authority and civil conflict could lead to extreme outcomes, strengthening his emphasis on security and political stability.
In 1650, Hobbes’s earlier treatise The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic was published without his authorization, circulating arguments for strong sovereignty more widely. Its appearance helped set the stage for Leviathan by showing how Hobbes tried to apply a “geometric,” step-by-step method to politics and human behavior.
In 1651, Hobbes published Leviathan; or, The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil, his most influential statement of social contract theory. He argued that, in a “state of nature” without an enforcing authority, people face a persistent risk of violent conflict, so they rationally authorize a sovereign to keep peace. The book also addressed church–state power, insisting that religious authority should not rival civil sovereignty.
Hobbes gave a presentation copy of Leviathan to the exiled Prince Charles, but the book offended many royalist advisers. A key trigger was Hobbes’s implication that subjects may abandon a ruler who cannot protect them—linking political obligation to security rather than sacred or hereditary right. This controversy pushed Hobbes out of the exiled court and made Paris increasingly unsafe for him.
By the end of 1651, Hobbes returned to England and made peace with the new regime led by Oliver Cromwell. This move matched Leviathan’s practical political lesson: stability depends on recognizing the authority that can actually enforce peace, even when the form of government changes.
In 1660, the monarchy was restored and Charles II returned as king after the Commonwealth period. Hobbes regained royal favor, showing that his reputation and personal connections could survive regime change even while his ideas about sovereignty remained controversial.
In 1666, the House of Commons prepared a bill against atheism and profaneness and instructed a committee to investigate Leviathan. Hobbes feared legal or religious prosecution and destroyed some papers he thought might be used against him, illustrating how arguments about religion and sovereign authority could become personal risks in Restoration politics.
In 1668, Hobbes produced a Latin version of Leviathan that differed in important passages from the 1651 English text. Publishing in Latin helped him reach a wider European audience and, in context of renewed suspicion, offered a chance to reframe points that critics treated as heretical or politically dangerous.
Hobbes completed Behemoth in 1668 as a dialogue-style history explaining how England fell into civil war from 1640 to 1660. The work linked Hobbes’s political theory to an interpretation of recent events, stressing how faction, religious conflict, and weakened authority could unravel social order.
In 1681, Behemoth and A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England appeared in print after Hobbes’s death. Their publication extended Hobbes’s political impact beyond Leviathan, strengthening debates about sovereignty, law, and how a state should control conflicting authorities to prevent a return to civil conflict.
Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, State of Nature, and Political Impact (1641–1700)