Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes was born in Westport, England on April 5, 1588. Thomas Hobbes was brought up by his uncle who provided for Hobbes education. At age 14 Hobbes went to Magdalen Hall in Oxford to study. In 1608 Hobbes left Oxford and became a private tutor for William Cavendish, the eldest son of Lord Cavendish. As the tutor of William Cavendish, Hobbes traveled to France, Italy, and Germany in 1610. During his travels, Hobbes met with other leading scholars of the day, including Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson. In 1640, Hobbes defended king Charles I. After a civil war erupted, he fled to safety in France and lived there from 1640 to 1650. After the civil war ended Hobbes moved back to England. While he travelled, Hobbes met other philosophers and began writing his own books …show more content…
Hobbes made great advancements in political philosophy and made contributions to the development of the Anti-Aristotelian concept of science. Hobbes’ political philosophy influenced John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kent. Thomas Hobbes is considered one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes also contributed to advances in history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, and ethics. Hobbes developed key ideas we still use today including the fundamentals of European liberal thought, the right of the individual, the natural equality of all men, the arterial character of the political order, the view that all legitimate political powers must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people, and the liberal interpretation of the law. His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, and of political communities as being based on a “social contract” remains major topics of political philosophy