Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport near Malmesbury in Wiltshire. His lifetime would span the political crises of 17th-century Britain, which strongly shaped his effort to explain society and government using a materialist (matter-and-motion) view of human beings.
Hobbes entered long-term service with the Cavendish household, a relationship that provided financial support and access to intellectual networks. This patronage helped him pursue wide reading and later develop a systematic philosophy linking nature, human psychology, and politics.
Hobbes’s first major publication was an English translation of Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War. The project reflected his interest in how fear, faction, and leadership failures can destroy a political community—themes that later reappeared in Leviathan.
As tensions rose between King Charles I and Parliament, Hobbes wrote The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. In it, he began arguing that stable government needs a strong sovereign power because people’s desires, fears, and competition can otherwise lead to conflict.
In late 1640 Hobbes left England for Paris, beginning an exile that lasted about eleven years. This move placed him in major European intellectual circles and gave him time to develop a unified, science-like approach to politics grounded in his materialist view of human nature.
Hobbes published De Cive ("On the Citizen") in Latin, setting out an early version of his civil and political theory. It argues that peace requires people to leave a dangerous pre-political condition and authorize a governing power strong enough to enforce rules.
While in Paris, Hobbes served as a mathematics tutor to the exiled Prince Charles (later Charles II). The experience kept Hobbes close to high political stakes and reinforced his focus on how authority, religion, and security interact during civil breakdown.
Hobbes published Leviathan, his most famous work, presenting government as a human-made “artificial person” authorized by individuals seeking safety. The book ties politics to a materialist psychology: thought and choice are explained in terms of bodily processes like sensation, appetite, and aversion, not an immaterial soul directing the body.
By the end of 1651, Hobbes returned from Paris to England and made his peace with the new government under Oliver Cromwell. This marked a practical test of his theory that political obligation is owed to the effective sovereign power that can provide protection.
Hobbes published De Corpore ("On the Body"), the first part of his planned trilogy on “the elements of philosophy.” It develops his method and metaphysics, treating nature in terms of bodies in motion and arguing that scientific explanation should proceed by clear definitions and reasoning about material causes.
Hobbes published De Homine ("On Man"), continuing his effort to explain human perception, thinking, and motivation in naturalistic terms. This volume helped connect his account of human mental life—understood as bodily processes—to his ethics and politics, where fear and desire for security drive people toward government.
In 1666, the House of Commons considered a bill against atheism and profaneness and instructed a committee to investigate Leviathan. Hobbes felt threatened and destroyed some papers, showing how his materialist and anti-clerical reputation could become politically dangerous even late in life.
A revised Latin edition of Leviathan was published in Amsterdam, prepared for Hobbes’s collected Latin works. The Latin version included significant changes and additions on sensitive theological issues, reflecting both ongoing controversy around the book and Hobbes’s effort to defend his position while maintaining core arguments about sovereignty.
Hobbes died at Hardwick Hall, still connected to the Cavendish family after decades of service. By the time of his death, his materialist approach—explaining thought, language, and politics through bodies, motion, and human passions—had become a lasting reference point in debates about mind, religion, and the foundations of political authority.
Thomas Hobbes: Materialist Philosophy and 'Leviathan' (1620–1679)