biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1588–1679)
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| biography:
| Political philosopher, born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, S England, UK. He studied at Oxford, and began a long tutorial association with the Cavendish family, through which he travelled widely and became acquainted with such leading intellectuals of the day as Bacon, Ben Jonson, Galileo, Descartes, and Gassendi. After studying Euclidean geometry, he thought to extend its method into a comprehensive science of man and society. Obsessed by the civil disorders of his time, he wrote several works on government, including Elements of Law (completed in 1640) and De cive (1642). In 1646 he became mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales at the exiled English court in Paris, where he wrote his masterpiece, Leviathan (1651), presenting his mature thoughts on metaphysics, psychology, and political philosophy. He was a thoroughgoing materialist, and argued that human beings are wholly selfish; enlightened self-interest explains the social contract in which we surrender the right of aggression to the sovereign state. In 1652 he returned to England, submitted to Cromwell, and settled in London. After the Restoration, he was given a pension, but continued to be a highly controversial figure. His last works, written in his 80s, were an autobiography in Latin verse (1672) and verse translations of the Iliad (1675) and Odyssey (1676). |
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