Thomas Hobbes Facts & Worksheets

Thomas Hobbes was born on April 5, 1588, in Westport, Wiltshire, England. He died on December 4, 1679 in Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire. He was an English philosopher, physicist, and historian primarily recognized for his theories on politics, as articulated in his masterpiece “Leviathan” (1651). 

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Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

• Hobbes’ father was the tyrant rector of a little Wiltshire parish church. Disgraced following a brawl at his chapel door, he vanished and left his three children in the hands of his brother, a wealthy glover at Malmesbury. 
• Hobbes was sent to school at Westport when he was four years old, later to a private school, and finally, at 15, to Magdalen Hall at the University of Oxford, where he studied traditional arts and became interested in maps in his spare time. Hobbes spent practically his entire adult life working for several members of the affluent and aristocratic Cavendish family.
• After graduating from Oxford in 1608, he was hired as a page and teacher to William Cavendish, later the second Earl of Devonshire. Hobbes worked for the family and their allies for many decades.
• He worked as a translator, travel companion, bookkeeper, business representative, political consultant, and scientific collaborator. Hobbes became associated with the royalist side in disagreements between the monarch and Parliament that lasted until the 1640s and culminated in the English Civil Wars. 
• Moreover, he was employed by William Cavendish, the first Earl of Devonshire, and his heirs. Hobbes also worked for the Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a relative of William Cavendish and Sir Charles Cavendish, Newcastle’s brother. The latter was the hub of the “Welbeck Academy,” an informal community of scientists named after one of the family residences at Nottinghamshire’s Welbeck Abbey.

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

• Hobbes’ persistent intellectual interests in politics and natural science were fed by the two branches of the Cavendish family, respectively. Hobbes worked for the Earls of Devonshire irregularly until 1628, when Newcastle and his brother hired him. 
• Hobbes became a member of multiple intellectual networks in England by both branches of the Cavendish dynasty and contacts he made on the Continent as a traveling companion to several successors to the Devonshire title.
• Further afield in Paris, he became acquainted with the theologian Marin Mersenne’s community of scientists, theologians, and philosophers. For instance, René Descartes was a member of this group. Before studying political theory, Hobbes was involved in practical politics. Hobbes would have followed the contributions to parliamentary discussions of the youthful William Cavendish, an official of the 1614 and 1621 Parliaments. 
• The financial activities of the Earls of Devonshire provided additional exposure to politics. Hobbes attended several meetings of the executive committee of the Virginia Business, a trade business founded by James I to occupy parts of North America’s eastern coast, and met many influential figures there. 
• Through his connections with figures who met at Great Tew, he also tackled political difficulties; with them, he disputed not only theological issues but also how the Anglican church should be directed and organized.
• In the late 1630s, Parliament and King Charles I disagreed on how far typical kingly powers may be stretched in exceptional circumstances, particularly when obtaining funds for armies. Hobbes wrote a book in 1640 defending the king’s generalization of his prerogatives.
• Arguments from Hobbes’ treatise were employed in debates by Royalist members of Parliament, and the treatise itself was disseminated in manuscript form. Hobbes’ first work of political philosophy, The Elements of Law, Natural and Political (authored in 1640, printed in a misedited unauthorized edition in 1650), was not intended for publication as a book.
• Hobbes, the scientist, started to emerge in his forties. He did not study mathematics or science at Oxford, and his first education in Wiltshire was in ancient languages. His fascination with motion and its effects was primarily sparked by his conversations, reading on the Continent, and his friendship with the scientifically and numerically inclined Welbeck Cavendish. 
• On the other hand, Hobbes was allegedly enchanted by Euclid’s way of presenting ideas in the Elements in 1629 or 1630. According to a contemporary biographer, he fell in love with geometry after discovering a volume of Euclid in a gentleman’s study.
• Later, presumably in the mid-1630s, he had developed sufficient skill to conduct independent research in optics, which he later claimed to have pioneered. He discussed the topic with other persons at the Welbeck Academy who were also interested in his study.
• Meanwhile, as a member of Mersenne’s group in Paris after 1640, he was considered a theorist of optics and ballistics, ethics, and politics. Indeed, some competent French mathematicians, including Gilles de Roberval, credited him with mathematical skills.
• Furthermore, Hobbes, who was self-taught in the sciences and was an inventor, at least in optics, saw himself as an instructor or transmitter of sciences produced by others. In this regard, he was thinking of sciences which, like his own optics, traced observed phenomena back to fundamental laws concerning the sizes, forms, locations, speeds, and trajectories of matter pieces. 
• Moreover, De Corpore and De Homine incorporated, among other things, Galileo’s findings on the motions of terrestrial bodies, Kepler’s findings on astronomy, William Harvey’s findings on blood circulation, and Hobbes’ findings on optics. 
• His major trilogy, De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive, was his attempt to organize natural science, psychology, and politics into an organizational structure going from the most fundamental to the most specialized.

EXILE IN PARIS

• Hobbes was concerned for his safety when civil conflict flared up in 1640. He escaped to Paris shortly after finishing The Elements of Law, where he rejoined Mersenne’s group and made connections with other English exiles. He would spend more than a decade in Paris, working on optics and De Cive, De Corpore, and Leviathan. Hobbes was invited to teach mathematics to Charles II, the young prince of Wales, who sought asylum in Paris in 1646.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

• Hobbes delivered his political philosophy in a variety of formats for various audiences. De Cive presents his hypothesis in what he considers its most scientific form. Furthermore, De Cive was a Latin book written for a demographic of Continental savants interested in the “new” science.
• Hobbes dismissed one of Aristotle’s most renowned theses in politics after a few paragraphs, namely that human beings are inherently adapted to a polis and do not entirely fulfill their natures until they perform the citizen position.
• For instance, Hobbes flips Aristotle’s premise, claiming humans are inherently unsuited to political life. They naturally criticize and compete with one another, are readily misled by the rhetoric of ambitious people, and place far more value on themselves than on others.
• Many people in Hobbes’ social contract trade liberty for safety. According to Hobbes, independence, with its open invitation to local conflict and, eventually, all-out war—a “war of every man against every man”—is overvalued in conventional political thought and public opinion. The sovereign decides who owns what, who holds what public positions, how the economy is governed, what activities are crimes, and how criminals should be punished.
• On the other hand, the king is the highest-ranking officer of the army, the supreme interpreter of the law, and the supreme interpreter of scripture, and he has power over any national church.
• Hobbes’ political views influenced his work in various domains, notably historiography and legal theory. His political theory is primarily concerned with the organization of government to avoid civil conflict. 
• Furthermore, Hobbes’ studies on church history and philosophy history were also heavily influenced by his politics. He was adamantly opposed to the division of government powers, whether between branches or among church and state. His philosophy history mainly deals with how metaphysics was utilized to keep people under the control of Roman Catholicism with the cost of loyalty to a civic power. 

OPTICS OF THOMAS HOBBES

• Hobbes’ most important discoveries in natural science were in optics. In his day, an optical theory was required to make pronouncements about the nature of light, the conveyance of light from the Sun to the Earth, reflection and refraction, and the operation of optical equipment such as mirrors and lenses. Hobbes addressed these issues in many brief treatises and correspondences, including one with Descartes on the latter’s Dioptrics (1637). A Minute or First Draught of the Optiques (1646) was Hobbes’ most polished optical work.

SYSTEM OF THOMAS HOBBES

• Mechanical theories are those that attribute all observed outcomes to matter and motion. He believed that only material objects are accurate and that the subject matter of the natural sciences is the movements of material things at various levels of generality. Hobbes’ trilogy’s natural science system provides his interpretation of the materialist foundations that underpin all science.
• Although Hobbes is widely regarded as having discovered “laws of motion” for humans and societies, the best that can be said is that he based his views on politics on psychological concepts that he believed might be enlightened by general laws of motion.

LAST YEARS AND INFLUENCE

• Hobbes engaged himself in his final years by returning to his youth’s classical studies. At the age of 84, he published his autobiography in Latin verse, with its whimsical humor, occasional pathos, and supreme self-complacency. Furthermore, Hobbes’ significance stems not just from his political philosophy but also from his contribution to an anti-Aristotelian, totally materialist view of natural science. 

Thomas Hobbes Worksheets

This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about Thomas Hobbes across 25 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Thomas Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, physicist, and historian primarily recognized for his theories on politics, as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan (1651). 

Complete List of Included Worksheets

Below is a list of all the worksheets included in this document.

1. Thomas Hobbes Facts
2. #Hobbes_Interest
3. #ThoMUSTREAD
4. The Allies
5. Where He Started
6. Top 5
7. Tho-Sum It Up!
8. My Philosopher
9. How It Works
10. Past, Present & Future
11. Signing The Contract

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Thomas Hobbes?

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his works on political philosophy and his famous book, “Leviathan” (1651). He was a significant figure during the Enlightenment era.

What is Hobbes’s view of the state of nature?

Hobbes’s view of the state of nature was a central concept in his philosophy. He argued that in the state of nature, before the establishment of civil society, people lived in a state of war, characterized by constant fear, competition, and conflict. In this condition, life was “nasty, brutish, and short.”

How does Hobbes justify the need for a social contract and political authority?

Hobbes believed that the state of nature was chaotic and undesirable, so he argued for the necessity of a social contract. According to him, individuals willingly surrender some of their natural rights and freedom to a central authority (the Leviathan) in exchange for security and protection. The Leviathan, typically a monarchy, is responsible for maintaining order and preventing the state of nature’s chaos.

What is Hobbes’s view on the nature of human beings?

Hobbes had a pessimistic view of human nature. He believed that humans are inherently self-interested, driven by a desire for self-preservation. In his view, human nature is characterized by a perpetual struggle for power, which makes cooperation difficult without a strong central authority.

How did Hobbes’s ideas influence political philosophy and modern governance?

Hobbes’s ideas laid the foundation for modern political philosophy and the social contract theory. His work greatly influenced subsequent philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who expanded on his ideas. Hobbes’s emphasis on the need for a strong, centralized government and his focus on the protection of individual rights have contributed to the development of modern democratic and authoritarian political systems alike. His ideas continue to be a subject of debate and discussion in political theory and philosophy.

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