Philosopher · Early modern
Thomas Hobbes
1588–1679 · Materialism and social contract
Conformed to the Church of England; a thoroughgoing materialist who made the sovereign the judge of religion.
Hobbes built the first great modern political philosophy on a mechanistic account of man: bodies in motion, driven by appetite and fear, who escape the “war of all against all” only by contracting to obey an absolute sovereign. He was a nominalist, a materialist about the soul, a determinist, and an early critic of the Bible's authorship.
Why he matters: Leviathan is the fountainhead of the contractarian idea of authority that Leo XIII answered in Diuturnum Illud (1881), and of the Erastian state that subordinates the Church; Catholic political thinkers from Suárez's heirs to Maritain and Pierre Manent write with Hobbes in view.
Where to be careful
His materialism and mortalism deny the spiritual, immortal soul (Lateran V), his determinism denies free will (Trent, Session 6, canon 5), his contract theory makes authority a human artifact (Diuturnum Illud), and his Erastianism puts the sovereign above the Church; his works were placed on the Index.
Reading
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LeviathanThomas Hobbes · Parts I–II for man and commonwealth; Parts III–IV for his treatment of Scripture and the “kingdom of darkness.”
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An Intellectual History of LiberalismPierre Manent · A Catholic political philosopher on how Hobbes set the modern problem.
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The Theological Origins of ModernityMichael Allen Gillespie · Hobbes as the heir of nominalism.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.