Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

Hilarius Bogbinder looks at a man who wanted to make Peace from Warre.

“One of the greatest geniuses of the 17th Century” was how Pierre Bayle (1646-1707), a French lexicographer, described Thomas Hobbes in his Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (p.467). It is hard to argue with this assessment, even for a man who was a contemporary of Newton, Galileo, Shakespeare, and Descartes. Hobbes was born under Elizabeth I (1537-1603), and his life overlapped with Shakespeare’s (1564-1616), though the Bard was not mentioned in the philosopher’s works.

We know a lot about Hobbes, not least because he presented his story well: he wrote several autobiographies to defend himself from charges of atheism. We are fortunate that John Aubrey (1626-1697), a fellow Wiltshireman, and a friend of the philosopher, also wrote a very readable and, at times, refreshingly candid, biography of Hobbes, which recounted the thinker’s achievements as well as his many quirks. Except for Aubrey, few would be aware that Thomas Hobbes was a health fanatic, and that he was prone to singing for the sake of longevity, not to the delight of others: “He sang aloud (not that he had a very good voice, but for his health’s sake); he did believe it did his lungs good and conduced much to prolong his life” (The Life of Mr Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, p.352). Notwithstanding that Hobbes cared about his health, his friend reported that, “when he did drinke, he would drinke to excesse” (Ibid, p.350). His biographer also reported that the philosopher was six foot tall – at a time when the average was 5’5. He also lived to his 92nd year, at a time when life expectancy was a mere 43.