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Hobbes is a character in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. He is Calvin's stuffed tiger and best friend, and is depicted with two distinct identities.

Hobbes' Personality[link]

Hobbes is seen in two differentiating perspectives. The creator, Bill Watterson, clearly states it's not Calvin's imagination that makes him come to life when he's around. Calvin views him as a live tiger; as best friend. To everybody else he's a stuffed tiger. When he was captured by Susie (because he took Binky Betsy) he was very willing, it seemed to Calvins point of view.

Hobbes is often shown to be smarter and wiser than Calvin when he is pictured as a real tiger. He is seen reading more often than his owner and tries to be the voice of reason when Calvin tries to perform a semi-risky stunt or one of his schemes. Hobbes' advice mostly has no effect on Calvin, who usually ignores Hobbes's reasoning and winds up getting in trouble for his actions. Because of this, some fans say that Hobbes represents Calvin's conscience.

Hobbes is named after Thomas Hobbes, a philosopher who at times had a poor outlook on life and human nature. When Hobbes is shown to be alive, he is proud of his species and glad not to be a human, showing that when Hobbes comes to life, he too believes he is a real tiger.

Relationship with Calvin[link]

For the most part, Calvin and Hobbes converse and play together, reveling in what is ultimately a deep friendship. Hobbes acts as a philosophical foil to Calvin; where Calvin is preoccupied with predestination and dreams of grandeur, Hobbes is a much more realistic thinker; he is much more focused on the present and the simple pleasant things in life (a prime example being a strip in which the two talk about what they would do with a wish; Calvin makes it clear that he'd want material things, while Hobbes wishes for a simple tuna sandwich- adding that he got his wish.) They also frequently argue or even fight with each other, though their disagreements are generally short-lived. Hobbes often beats up Calvin with an energetic pounce-and-tackle attack, which leaves Calvin bruised and scraped up but not seriously harmed. Hobbes takes great pleasure in his demonstrations of feline prowess, while Calvin expresses keen frustration at his inability to stop the attacks or explain his injuries to his skeptical parents. Hobbes is proud to be an animal and seems to have a low opinion of humans in general (when Calvin is wondering why people exist, Hobbes simply responds "tiger food"), and Calvin claims that he once ate a kid in his school named Tommy Chesnutt for making fun of Calvin bringing Hobbes to school ("Ugh! He needed a bath, too" was Hobbes' comment).

Hobbes is shown to be an enthusiastic, if not particularly talented, artist, a trait which he shares with Calvin, though to a lesser degree, sometimes supplying the (often unnecessary) artwork for Calvin's school projects, such as a letterhead featuring a "Calvin shield" surrounded by "lance-toting tigers". Hobbes also appears to be more enthusiastic about knowledge than Calvin since Hobbes likes reading more than he and sometimes does Calvin's homework.

Hobbes is almost always willing to finish Calvin's homework when Calvin gets lazy, despite that Hobbes' motive for doing so is usually only to boast of the academic knowledge and skill of tigers while solving the problems (according to Hobbes tigers need to learn physics, biology and artistic expression to hunt).^[1] While he explains the homework to Calvin in a seemingly scientific and advanced method, the answer that he provides is usually completely incorrect, even though most times the problem only involves simple addition or subtraction. When Hobbes is not trying to explain the homework to him, Calvin is usually reading comics or otherwise doing anything but work.

Calvin often yells, "I'M HOME!" when he gets home, making him an easy target for Hobbes. Sometimes, though, Calvin realizes that this is not a good idea, and manages to thwart his tiger, although this sometimes leads to more trouble. Calvin once managed to go through his back door to sneak up on Hobbes, yelled "I'M HOME!" before opening the door (causing Hobbes to leap into the door, or in one occasion, startling him into attacking Calvin anyway), and locked the door after Hobbes left the house (accidentally locking out his mother as well). Calvin also sometimes creates decoys wearing his clothes using pieces of wood, paper bags of leaves with the face on it, or makeshift snowmen, also in his clothes. Hobbes, however, usually sees through Calvin's decoy and either spots him or uses the decoy to his advantage. In one strip, Calvin's fear and expectation of this attack is used as humor; Calvin opens the door as usual, but is not attacked; he then goes upstairs to find Hobbes reading comic books, relatively unconcerned.

Hobbes is also "President-and-First Tiger" of the G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS) club. The club headquarters are located in a treehouse (although in one strip an emergency meeting was held in a cardboard box called the "Box of Secrecy"), which Hobbes can get into without needing the rope ladder. Therefore, he is in charge of granting Calvin access, which involves Calvin reciting the password, which is eight verses of a poem extolling tigers. It can also be much more than this. In one strip Hobbes remarked "You're not doing the dance."

Origins and development[link]

Watterson based some of Hobbes's characteristics, especially his playfulness and attack instinct, on his own pet cat, Sprite, who is known to unexpectedly jump out of nowhere. Hobbes takes great pride in being a feline (his love affair with tuna borders on addiction) and frequently makes wry or even disparaging comments about human nature, declaring his good fortune to lead a tiger's life. Reflecting upon his work in the introduction he wrote to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson observed that his two protagonists revealed different facets of his own personality. Calvin generally voices what Watterson considered his immature side, often echoing the sentiments Watterson saw prevalent in modern America. ("The consumer is always right"; "There has to be a way to cram more violence into ninety minutes"; "Hold on, I need to inflate my basketball shoes.") By contrast, Hobbes offers a voice of ironic maturity — though he is himself far from immune to silliness.

Calvin captures Hobbes in a "tiger trap" during the first strip of the comic. Watterson initially believed that it was important to establish how his two main characters first met, but by the time he wrote the Tenth Anniversary Book, he had changed his opinion, saying it was unnecessary and even detrimental to the feel of the strip. Much later, it is apparent in several strips that Hobbes and Calvin have known each other their whole lives, including when Calvin was an infant. This contradicted the first two strips, which show Calvin and Hobbes' first meeting. One strip especially shows Calvin claiming that he didn't remember much of his infancy. While Calvin starts going on and on about how he suspects he was being brainwashed when he was very, very young, and asking nobody in particular what he remembered that someone wanted him to forget, Hobbes says "I seem to recall that you spent most of the time burping up." Also, in an earlier strip, Hobbes once mused about some advice his father gave him.

Hobbes' appearance changed over the strip's run; in the beginning he was slightly shorter, and his tufts of fur less defined and shorter. His eyes also had more of a round shape, as opposed to the oval shape of later years. The most notable change, however, were the pads on Hobbes's hands. In earlier years, Watterson drew the pads on Hobbes' hands as a reminder that they were really paws, but later removed them on the grounds that he found them to be visually distracting. However, in one strip after Waterson stopped drawing the pads, Hobbes remarks in response to a complaint by Calvin, "my fuzzy mittens have pads!"

Hobbes' name was revealed in the third strip when Calvin claims that Hobbes was making a lot of noise by jumping on the bed.

Hobbes has claimed that he actually had a family. In one strip, Calvin asks Hobbes what he should do if Moe tries to attack him. Hobbes claims that Calvin should scramble for a tree and sit in it all day. Calvin is outraged by the advice and Hobbes states, "It doesn't impress the girls, of course, but there's no sense in impressing them and getting killed, my dad used to say."

Hobbes' reality[link]

From Calvin's point of view, Hobbes is a walking, talking, usually bipedal tiger, larger than Calvin and full of his own attitudes and ideas. But when the perspective shifts to any other character, readers see merely a stuffed tiger (there are some occasions in which Calvin's perspective of Hobbes is visible in the same panel as a parent, but the parent was not looking at the time). This is, of course, an odd dichotomy, and Watterson explains it as thus:

Many readers assume that Hobbes is either a product of Calvin's imagination, or a stuffed animal that comes to life when Calvin is the only one around, or when nobody else but him is looking. However, Watterson rejects both of these interpretations, saying, "Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than dolls coming to life"; thus, there is no concrete definition of Hobbes' reality.^[3] Watterson explained: "Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way." Hobbes' reality is in the eye of the beholder. The so-called 'gimmick' of Hobbes is the juxtaposition of Calvin and Hobbes' reality and everyone else's, with the two rarely agreeing.

Despite this, in the world of the comic the other characters often speak of Hobbes as Calvin's "imaginary friend." As well, it is sometimes difficult to imagine how the "stuffed toy" interpretation of Hobbes is consistent with what the characters see. For example, when Hobbes pounces on Calvin, the next panel shows Calvin lying on the ground, covered with dirt, with Hobbes lying on top of him, and then when Calvin walks in, his mother can clearly see him beaten up, and she is left completely baffled. Also, Hobbes "cuts" Calvin's hair (rather unsuccessfully), leading his parents to think that he cut his own hair badly. In another example, Hobbes "assists" Calvin's attempt to become a Houdini-style escape artist by tying Calvin to a chair. Calvin, however, cannot escape, and his irritated father must undo the knots, all the while asking Calvin how he could do this to himself. In a rare interview, Watterson explained his approach to this situation:

Additionally, aspects of Hobbes' existence as a "real" tiger and a stuffed animal converge with little dispute from Calvin. An example is Hobbes's frequent washings or "baths" in the laundry machine which Calvin accepts. Likewise, in one strip, Calvin states that Hobbes becomes "a little loopy" when he comes out of the dryer. Another example is when Calvin's mom signed Calvin up for swimming lessons, Calvin asks why Hobbes can't come, so she responds (eyes rolling) "it's not good to get tigers wet," to which Calvin asks Hobbes why this is true, and Hobbes replies "it takes us all day to dry out, and until we do, we smell funny." Another example is that although the debut strip showed Calvin capturing Hobbes with a snare in such a way that seems like it's the first time they've ever met, another strip implies that Hobbes is older than Calvin and has been around his entire life. This strip has Calvin quoting that he can't recall anything from when he was under the age of three. Hobbes responds to this by saying Calvin spent most of the time burping up. Though other characters often refer to Hobbes as a "stuffed tiger" to Calvin, he avoids or ignores those comments (for example, when Hobbes is believed to have been stolen during a burglary, Calvin's mom reassures him that a robber would not want a stuffed tiger, to which Calvin responds "But Hobbes is so trusting...").

In response to the journalist's assumption that Hobbes was a figment of Calvin's imagination, Watterson responded,

Hobbes is often the voice of reason, contrasting Calvin's manic impulsiveness. It is ambiguous if this rationality is in Hobbes as a distinct personality, or in Calvin as a kind of conscience. In the end, the question becomes less about absolute truth and more about different versions of reality: the nature of Hobbes' existence is never a puzzle to be solved, but rather a subtle comment on the power of imagination, and on the similar power of a lack thereof.

Susie Derkins also comments on Hobbes. When Calvin refuses to play house with her because she brings home a rabbit from the "Hospital", she calls after him, "I don't see why you'll play with your dumb ol' tiger but not Mr. Bun!" Afterward, Hobbes comments that "Mr. Bun seems comatose, did you notice?" contrasting Hobbes' "reality" to that of another stuffed animal. Hobbes has a very large crush on Susie as well, much more than Calvin.

Calvin sometimes threatens to wound Hobbes, like when Hobbes declares that Calvin and Susie are going to be married and asks whether he should wear spats. Calvin replies "In a minute you'll be wearing a body cast!"

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Calvin and Hobbes Publicity site at Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Hobbes at the Calvin and Hobbes Wiki

Thomas Hobbes

Born	(1588-04-05)5 April 1588 Westport near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England
Died	4 December 1679(1679-12-04) (aged 91) Derbyshire, England
Era	17th-century philosophy (Modern Philosophy)
Region	Western Philosophers
School	Social contract, classical realism, empiricism, materialism, ethical egoism
Main interests	Political philosophy, history, ethics, geometry
Notable ideas	Modern founder of the social contract tradition; life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"
Influenced by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Lucretius, Galileo, Machiavelli, René Descartes, Gassendi, Grotius, Selden, Great Tew Circle
Influenced Butler, Leibniz, Spinoza; All subsequent Western political philosophy; sociology: Ferdinand Tönnies, John Locke

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679), in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury,^[1] was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.^[2]

Hobbes was a champion of absolutism for the sovereign but he also developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be "representative" and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid.^[3]

He was one of the founders of modern political philosophy.^[4] His understanding of humans as being matter and motion, obeying the same physical laws as other matter and motion, remains influential; and his account of human nature as self-interested cooperation, and of political communities as being based upon a "social contract" remains one of the major topics of political philosophy.

In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, geometry, the physics of gases, theology, ethics, and general philosophy.

Early life and education[link]

Thomas Hobbes was born at Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England, on 5 April 1588.^[5] Born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear."^[5] His childhood is almost a complete blank, and his mother's name is unknown.^[6] His father, also named Thomas, was the vicar of Charlton and Westport. Thomas Sr. abandoned his three children to the care of an older brother, Thomas junior's uncle Francis, when he was forced to flee to London after being involved in a fight with a clergyman outside his own church. Hobbes was educated at Westport church from the age of four, passed to the Malmesbury school and then to a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate of the University of Oxford. Hobbes was a good pupil, and around 1603 he went up to Magdalen Hall, which is most closely related to Hertford College, Oxford.^{[7][8][9][10]} The principal John Wilkinson was a Puritan, and he had some influence on Hobbes.

At university, Hobbes appears to have followed his own curriculum; he was "little attracted by the scholastic learning". He did not complete his B.A. degree until 1608, but he was recommended by Sir James Hussey, his master at Magdalen, as tutor to William, the son of William Cavendish, Baron of Hardwick (and later Earl of Devonshire), and began a life-long connection with that family.^[11]

Hobbes became a companion to the younger William and they both took part in a grand tour in 1610. Hobbes was exposed to European scientific and critical methods during the tour in contrast to the scholastic philosophy which he had learned in Oxford. His scholarly efforts at the time were aimed at a careful study of classic Greek and Latin authors, the outcome of which was, in 1628, his great translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the first translation of that work into English from a Greek manuscript. It has been argued that three of the discourses in the 1620 publication known as Horea Subsecivae: Observations and Discourses, also represent the work of Hobbes from this period.^[12]

Although he associated with literary figures like Ben Jonson and thinkers such as Francis Bacon, he did not extend his efforts into philosophy until after 1629. His employer Cavendish, then the Earl of Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628. The widowed countess dismissed Hobbes but he soon found work, again as a tutor, this time to Gervase Clifton, the son of Sir Gervase Clifton, 1st Baronet. This task, chiefly spent in Paris, ended in 1631 when he again found work with the Cavendish family, tutoring the son of his previous pupil. Over the next seven years as well as tutoring he expanded his own knowledge of philosophy, awakening in him curiosity over key philosophic debates. He visited Florence in 1636 and later was a regular debater in philosophic groups in Paris, held together by Marin Mersenne. From 1637 he considered himself a philosopher and scholar.

In Paris[link]

Thomas Hobbes

Hobbes's first area of study was an interest in the physical doctrine of motion and physical momentum. Despite his interest in this phenomenon, he disdained experimental work as in physics. He went on to conceive the system of thought to the elaboration of which he would devote his life. His scheme was first to work out, in a separate treatise, a systematic doctrine of body, showing how physical phenomena were universally explicable in terms of motion, at least as motion or mechanical action was then understood. He then singled out Man from the realm of Nature and plants. Then, in another treatise, he showed what specific bodily motions were involved in the production of the peculiar phenomena of sensation, knowledge, affections and passions whereby Man came into relation with Man. Finally he considered, in his crowning treatise, how Men were moved to enter into society, and argued how this must be regulated if Men were not to fall back into "brutishness and misery". Thus he proposed to unite the separate phenomena of Body, Man, and the State.

Hobbes came home, in 1637, to a country riven with discontent which disrupted him from the orderly execution of his philosophic plan. However, by the end of the Short Parliament in 1640, he had written a short treatise called The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. It was not published and only circulated among his acquaintances in manuscript form. A pirated version, however, was published about ten years later. Although it seems that much of The Elements of Law was composed before the sitting of the Short Parliament, there are polemical pieces of the work that clearly mark the influences of the rising political crisis. Nevertheless, many (though not all) elements of Hobbes's political thought were unchanged between The Elements of Law and Leviathan, which demonstrates that the events of the English Civil War had little effect on his contractarian methodology. It should be noted, however, that the arguments in Leviathan were modified from The Elements of Law when it came to the necessity of consent in creating political obligation. Namely, Hobbes wrote in The Elements of Law that Patrimonial kingdoms were not necessarily formed by the consent of the governed, while in Leviathan he argued that they were. This was perhaps a reflection either of Hobbes's thoughts concerning the engagement controversy or of his reaction to treatises published by Patriarchalists, such as Sir Robert Filmer, between 1640 and 1651.

When in November 1640 the Long Parliament succeeded the Short, Hobbes felt he was a marked man by the circulation of his treatise and fled to Paris. He did not return for eleven years. In Paris he rejoined the coterie about Mersenne, and wrote a critique of the Meditations on First Philosophy of Descartes, which was printed as third among the sets of "Objections" appended, with "Replies" from Descartes in 1641. A different set of remarks on other works by Descartes succeeded only in ending all correspondence between the two.

Hobbes also extended his own works somewhat, working on the third section, De Cive, which was finished in November 1641. Although it was initially only circulated privately, it was well received, and included lines of argumentation to be repeated a decade later in the Leviathan. He then returned to hard work on the first two sections of his work and published little except for a short treatise on optics (Tractatus opticus) included in the collection of scientific tracts published by Mersenne as Cogitata physico-mathematica in 1644. He built a good reputation in philosophic circles and in 1645 was chosen with Descartes, Gilles de Roberval and others, to referee the controversy between John Pell and Longomontanus over the problem of squaring the circle.

Civil War in England[link]

The English Civil War broke out in 1642, and when the Royalist cause began to decline in the middle of 1644 there was an exodus of the king's supporters to Europe. Many came to Paris and were known to Hobbes. This revitalised Hobbes's political interests and the De Cive was republished and more widely distributed. The printing began in 1646 by Samuel de Sorbiere through the Elsevier press at Amsterdam with a new preface and some new notes in reply to objections.

In 1647, Hobbes was engaged as mathematical instructor to the young Charles, Prince of Wales,^[13] who had come over from Jersey around July. This engagement lasted until 1648 when Charles went to Holland.

The company of the exiled royalists led Hobbes to produce an English book to set forth his theory of civil government in relation to the political crisis resulting from the war. The State, it now seemed to Hobbes, might be regarded as a great artificial man or monster (Leviathan), composed of men, with a life that might be traced from its generation under pressure of human needs to its dissolution through civil strife proceeding from human passions. The work was closed with a general "Review and Conclusion", in direct response to the war which raised the question of the subject's right to change allegiance when a former sovereign's power to protect was irrecoverably gone. He also criticised religious doctrines on rationalistic grounds in the Commonwealth.

During the years of the composition of Leviathan he remained in or near Paris. In 1647 Hobbes was overtaken by a serious illness which disabled him for six months. On recovering from this near fatal disorder, he resumed his literary task, and carried it steadily forward to completion by 1650. Meanwhile, a translation of De Cive was being produced; there has been much scholarly disagreement over whether Hobbes translated the work himself or not.

In 1650, a pirated edition of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic was published. It was divided into two separate small volumes (Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policie and De corpore politico, or the Elements of Law, Moral and Politick). In 1651 the translation of De Cive was published under the title of Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society. Meanwhile, the printing of the greater work was proceeding, and finally it appeared about the middle of 1651, under the title of Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common Wealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil, with a famous title-page engraving in which, from behind hills overlooking a landscape, there towered the body (above the waist) of a crowned giant, made up of tiny figures of human beings and bearing sword and crozier in the two hands.

The work had immediate impact. Soon Hobbes was more lauded and decried than any other thinker of his time. However, the first effect of its publication was to sever his link with the exiled royalists, forcing him to appeal to the revolutionary English government for protection. The exiles might very well have killed him; the secularist spirit of his book greatly angered both Anglicans and French Catholics. Hobbes fled back home, arriving in London in the winter of 1651. Following his submission to the council of state he was allowed to subside into private life in Fetter Lane.

[edit] Leviathan

Frontispiece of Leviathan

In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments – originating social contract theory. Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.

Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This, Hobbes argues, would lead to a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes). The description contains what has been called one of the best known passages in English philosophy, which describes the natural state mankind would be in, were it not for political community: ^[14]

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

— Leviathan XIII "Chapter XIII.: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their Felicity, and Misery.", Leviathan, http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=585&layout=html#chapter_89842 Leviathan XIII 

In such a state, people fear death, and lack both the things necessary to commodious living, and the hope of being able to toil to obtain them. So in order to avoid it people accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede some rights for the sake of protection. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. There is no doctrine of separation of powers in Hobbes's discussion.^[15] According to Hobbes, the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial, and ecclesiastical powers.

Opposition[link]

John Bramhall[link]

Hobbes now turned to complete the fundamental treatise of his philosophical system. He worked so steadily that De Corpore was first printed in 1654. Also in 1654, a small treatise, Of Liberty and Necessity, was published by Bishop John Bramhall, addressed at Hobbes. Bramhall, a strong Arminian, had met and debated with Hobbes and afterwards wrote down his views and sent them privately to be answered in this form by Hobbes. Hobbes duly replied, but not for publication. But a French acquaintance took a copy of the reply and published it with "an extravagantly laudatory epistle." Bramhall countered in 1655, when he printed everything that had passed between them (under the title of A Defence of the True Liberty of Human Actions from Antecedent or Extrinsic Necessity). In 1656 Hobbes was ready with The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, in which he replied "with astonishing force" to the bishop. As perhaps the first clear exposition of the psychological doctrine of determinism, Hobbes's own two pieces were important in the history of the free-will controversy. The bishop returned to the charge in 1658 with Castigations of Mr Hobbes's Animadversions, and also included a bulky appendix entitled The Catching of Leviathan the Great Whale.

John Wallis[link]

Beyond the spat with Bramhall, Hobbes was caught in a series of conflicts from the time of publishing his De Corpore in 1655. In Leviathan he had assailed the system of the original universities. Because Hobbes was so evidently opposed to the existing academic arrangements, and because De Corpore contained not only tendentious views on mathematics, but an unacceptable proof of the squaring of the circle (which was apparently an afterthought), mathematicians took him to be a target for polemics. John Wallis was not the first such opponent, but he tenaciously pursued Hobbes. The resulting controversy continued well into the 1670s.

Atheism[link]

Hobbes has been accused of atheism, or (in the case of Bramhall) of teachings which could lead to atheism. This was an important accusation, and Hobbes himself wrote, in his answer to Bramhall's "the catching of the Leviathan" that "atheism, impiety, and the like are words of the greatest defamation possible".^[16] Hobbes always defended himself from such accusations.^[17] In more recent times also, much has been made of his religious views by scholars such as Richard Tuck and J. G. A. Pocock, but there is still widespread disagreement about the exact significance of Hobbes's unusual views on religion.

As Martinich (1995, p. 31) has pointed out, in Hobbes's time, the term "atheist" was frequently applied to people who believed in God, but not divine providence, or to people who believed in God, but also maintained other beliefs which were inconsistent with such belief. He says that this "sort of discrepancy has led to many errors in determining who was an atheist in the early modern period". In this extended early modern sense of atheism, Hobbes did indeed take positions which were in strong disagreement with church teachings of his time. For example, Hobbes argued repeatedly that there are no incorporeal substances, and that all things, including human thoughts, and even God, heaven, and hell are corporeal, matter in motion. He argued that "though Scripture acknowledge spirits, yet doth it nowhere say, that they are incorporeal, meaning thereby without dimensions and quantity".^[18] (In this view, Hobbes claimed to be following Tertullian, whose views were not condemned in the Nicene creed.) He also, like Locke, stated that true revelation can never be in disagreement with human reason and experience,^[19] although he also argues that people should accept revelation and its interpretations also for the reason that they should accept the commands of their sovereign, in order to avoid war.

Later life[link]

Hobbes published, in 1658, the final section of his philosophical system, completing the scheme he had planned more than twenty years before. De Homine consisted for the most part of an elaborate theory of vision. The remainder of the treatise dealt cursorily with some of the topics more fully treated in the Human Nature and the Leviathan. In addition to publishing some controversial writings on mathematics and physics, Hobbes also continued to produce philosophical works. From the time of the Restoration he acquired a new prominence; "Hobbism" became a byword for all that respectable society ought to denounce. The young king, Hobbes's former pupil, now Charles II, remembered Hobbes and called him to the court to grant him a pension of £100.

The king was important in protecting Hobbes when, in 1666, the House of Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. That same year, on 17 October 1666, it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular... the book of Mr. Hobbes called the Leviathan".^[20] Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labelled a heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers. At the same time, he examined the actual state of the law of heresy. The results of his investigation were first announced in three short Dialogues added as an Appendix to his Latin translation of Leviathan, published at Amsterdam in 1668. In this appendix, Hobbes aimed to show that, since the High Court of Commission had been put down, there remained no court of heresy at all to which he was amenable, and that nothing could be heresy except opposing the Nicene Creed, which, he maintained, Leviathan did not do.

The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never thereafter publish anything in England on subjects relating to human conduct. The 1668 edition of his works was printed in Amsterdam because he could not obtain the censor's licence for its publication in England. Other writings were not made public until after his death, including Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on from the year 1640 to the year 1662. For some time, Hobbes was not even allowed to respond, whatever his enemies tried. Despite this, his reputation abroad was formidable, and noble or learned foreigners who came to England never forgot to pay their respects to the old philosopher.

His final works were a curious mixture: an autobiography in Latin verse in 1672, and a translation of four books of the Odyssey into "rugged" English rhymes that in 1673 led to a complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey in 1675.

In October 1679, Hobbes suffered a bladder disorder, which was followed by a paralytic stroke from which he died on 4 December 1679. He is said to have uttered the last words "A great leap in the dark" in his final moments of life.^[21] He was interred within St. John the Baptist Church in Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.

Selected bibliography[link]

• 1620. Three of the discourses in the Horae Subsecivae.^[12]
• 1629. Translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War
• 1640. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic
• 1650. Treatise on Human Nature
• 1642. De Cive (Latin)
• 1651. Philosophicall Rudiments concerning Government and Society (English translation of De Cive)^[22]
• 1651. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiasticall and Civil
• 1651. Pirated Edition of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, repackaged to include two parts:
  • Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policie
  • De Corpore Politico
• 1655. De Corpore (Latin)
• 1656. De Corpore (English translation)
• 1658. De Homine (Latin)
• 1654. Letters upon Liberty and Necessity
• 1656. The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance
• 1668. Latin translation of the Leviathan
• 1675. English translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey
• 1681. Postumously A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (written 1666)
• 1681. Posthumously Behemoth, or The Long Parliament (written in 1668, unpublished at the request of the King)

References[link]

Specific[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Macpherson, C. B. (1962). The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Malcolm, Noel. (2002). Aspects of Hobbes. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Malcolm, Noel. (2007). Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years' War: An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes. Oxford University Press.
• Manent, Pierre. (1994) An Intellectual History of Liberalism
• Martinich, A. P. (2003) "Thomas Hobbes," The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 281: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, Second Series, Detroit: Gale, pp. 130–144.
• Martinich, A. P. (1995), A Hobbes Dictionary, Blackwell 
• Martinich, A. P. (1997) Thomas Hobbes, New York: St. Martin's.
• Martinich, A. P. (1992) The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Martinich, A. P. (1999) Hobbes: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Martinich, A. P. Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Oakeshott, Michael (1975), "Hobbes on Civil Association", Oxford: Basil Blackwell
• Robinson, Dave & Groves, Judy (2003). Introducing Political Philosophy. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-450-X.
• Shapin, Steven and Shaffer, Simon (1995). Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Strauss, Leo (1936). The Political Philosophy of Hobbes; Its Basis and Its Genesis. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Strauss, Leo (1959). "On the Basis of Hobbes's Political Philosophy," in What Is Political Philosophy?, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, chap. 7.
• Skinner, Quentin. (1996). Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes's. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tönnies, Ferdinand (1925). Hobbes. Leben und Lehre, Stuttgart: Frommann, 3rd ed.
• Vieira, Monica Brito. (2009) The Elements of Representation in Hobbes, Leiden: Brill.
• Zagorin, Perez. (2009) Hobbes and the Law of Nature, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.

External links[link]

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Hobbes commentary online[link]

• Thomas Hobbes on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
• Thomas Hobbes nominated by Steven Pinker for the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives. (listen now)
• Thomas Hobbes at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hobbes Moral and Political Philosophy at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hobbes at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Hobbes at The Philosophy pages
• Hobbes at the History of Economic Thought website.
• Brief biography at Oregon State University
• A Brief Life of Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679 by John Aubrey at Oregon State University
• A short biography of Thomas Hobbes

General works online[link]

• Works by Thomas Hobbes at Project Gutenberg
• The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; Now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth, Bart., (London: Bohn, 1839–45). 11 volumes. Can be found on the internet:-

• Volume 1. De Corpore translated from Latin to English.
• Volume 2. De Cive.
• Volume 3. The Leviathan
• Volume 4.

• TRIPOS ; in Three Discourses :

• I. Human Nature, or the Fundamental Elements of Policy
• II. De Corpore Politico, or the Elements of Law
• III. Of Liberty and Necessity

• An Answer to Bishop Bramhall's Book, called " The Catching of the Leviathan"
• An Historical Narration concerning Heresy, and the Punishment thereof Considerations upon the Reputation, Loyalty, Manners, and Religion of Thomas Hobbes
• Answer to Sir William Davenant's Preface before " Gondibert"
• Letter to the Right Honourable Edward Howard

• Volume 5. The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance, clearly stated and debated between Dr Bramhall Bishop of Derry and Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury.
• Volume 6.

• A Dialogue Between a Philosopher & a Student of the Common Laws of England
• A Dialogue of the Common Law
• Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England, and of the Counsels and Artifices By Which They Were Carried On From the Year 1640 to the Year 1660
• The Art of Rhetoric Plainly Set Forth. With Pertinent Examples For the More Easy Understanding and Practice of the Same
• The Art of Sophistry

• Volume 7.

• Seven Philosophical Problems
• Decameron Physiologicum
• Proportion of a straight line to half the arc of a quadrant
• Six lessons to the Savilian Professors of the Mathematics
• ΣΤΙΓΜΑΙ, or Marks of the absurd Geometry etc. of Dr Wallis
• Extract of a letter from Henry Stubbe
• Three letters presented to the Royal Society against Dr Wallis
• Considerations on the answer of Dr Wallis
• Letters and other pieces

• Volume 8 and 9. The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated into English by Hobbes.
• Volume 10. The Iliad, and The Odyssey, translated by Hobbes into English
• Volume 11. Index.

• The Latin works can also be found

• Volume I. Biographical and Elementorum Philosophiae I: De Corpore
• Volume II. Elementorum Philosophiae II and III: De Homine and De Cive
• Volume III. Latin version of Leviathan.
• Volume IV. Various concerning mathematics, geometry and physics.
• Volume V. Various short works.