Hobbes (1588–1679)

Abstract

Hobbes’s chief concern was with the nature of political authority and its role in maintaining social order. This concern is not surprising, coming from one born an Elizabethan in the year of the Armada and growing up during the fear and religious persecution of the Tudor period, followed by the uncertain transition from Tudor to Stuart rule. Most immediately, he was provoked by the sharpening political and religious sectarianism in his adult years, and the ensuing conflict between Charles I and Parliament, into a turn towards a new form of political writing in 1628 and a project that was to bear its most famous fruit in 1650 with the publication of Leviathan.