Practice modes
Languages & Literature
Pakistan
World & History
1588 – 1679
Leviathan, social contract, state of nature
Hobbes held that in a hypothetical "state of nature", with no government to restrain them, human self-interest would produce a "war of all against all" in which life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". To escape this, rational people agree to a social contract, surrendering their freedom to an absolute sovereign (the Leviathan) in exchange for peace and security.
English philosopher who lived through the English Civil War, an experience of social collapse that shaped his entire political philosophy; served for a time as tutor to the future Charles II.