Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher who argued that a powerful sovereign could secure peace and protection from conflict. His political theory is best known from Leviathan.

State of nature: A hypothetical condition without a common political authority to enforce rules. Hobbes uses it to show why insecurity makes people seek a common power.
Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes's 1651 work arguing for an undivided sovereign authority as the basis of civil peace. It presents his political theory through the image and logic of an artificial person.
English Civil War: A series of armed conflicts in England from 1642 to 1651 between royalist and parliamentary forces. The conflict sharpened Hobbes's concern with political division and civil disorder.
John Locke: An English philosopher whose political theory defended natural rights and government by consent. Locke gives consent a role in government but limits authority through rights Hobbes did not recognize in the same way.
Social contract theory: A family of political theories that grounds legitimate authority in agreement among people. Hobbes helped establish the modern contract tradition, even as later thinkers revised its conclusions.
Social contract: A theory that political authority arises from an agreement among people. Hobbes explains sovereign authority as the result of people authorizing a common power.
Authorization (political philosophy): The act by which people treat another's actions as their own within a political arrangement. Hobbes makes subjects the authors of the sovereign's acts through mutual authorization.
Leviathan (1651 edition): The first published edition of Hobbes's Leviathan, issued in 1651. Its publication during the aftermath of civil war made his defense of strong sovereignty especially pointed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: An Enlightenment philosopher who argued that legitimate political authority rests on the general will. Rousseau's collective self-rule contrasts with Hobbes's authorization of a sovereign representative.
Legal positivism: The view that law's validity depends on social sources rather than moral merit alone. Hobbes's emphasis on sovereign command and enforceable law anticipates themes in positivist jurisprudence.

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