Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was a controversial thinker in the history of philosophy. Already in his time he became famous for his extraordinary knowledge of physics, mathematics, geometry, philosophy and theology. His contemporaries admired him for his knowledge, but they also feared him and even hated him, the latter due to the forcefulness and radicalism of some of his political ideas. A staunch pessimist, he was also a moralist and interpreted human nature as inclined to evil, hence limits had to be placed through just laws. Throughout his life he would deal personally with many of the intellectuals of his time, such as Descartes or Galileo, a universal sage whose scientific method influenced the work of Hobbes. Leviathan, an enigmatic and strange but very consistent book within political theory, would make him one of the great masters of the history of ideas.