 On April 5th, 1588, there was, we are told, a looming threat off the coast of Britain, a Leviathan of a different kind, the Spanish Armada. Just inland, a young woman named Catherine lay frightened into an early premature labor of which the product was a boy named Thomas Hobbes. This boy would someday grow to become known as perhaps the greatest political philosopher of his age. Being abandoned by his father sometime in his teens, Hobbes gained assistance from a successful uncle, which allowed him, at 15, to begin his higher education at Magdalene College, Oxford. He was less than enthused with the philosophy taught there and spent much of his leisure time reading instead Greek and Latin classics. Graduating at age 20, Hobbes found himself tutored to William Cavendish, the future Earl of Devonshire. This relationship would turn out to be invaluable when his teachings would later land him in boiling water with the local powers that be. Following some travel, he returned and served as secretary to the great English philosopher and statesman, Francis Bacon. These various connections would go on to shape much of his later philosophy, simultaneously saving and endangering his life. There came for Hobbes a turning point when, at age 40, he found in Euclid's The Elements, the sustaining structure which could support his thoroughly empirical philosophy. This structure was demonstrated in Proposition 47 of Book 1 and showed the process of referring to earlier and earlier propositions until returning to the original axioms and definitions, such as we saw in Spinoza's geometrical form of exposition which he implemented in his ethics. From the year 1629 onward, he would begin to compose his library. It was rather late in life for such a beginning. But for a man who lived until just shy of his 92nd year, perhaps this could be considered early. As stated before, he began publishing in 1629 with a translation of Thucydides. The reason for this translation was apparently quite simple. He meant it as a warning to England on the dangers of democracy. Following this in 1658, he published The Elements of Law, Natural and Politique, wherein he argues and defends the absolute power of the king. Next he spent some time away from public life due to the danger that the rising political tensions posed to a philosopher who championed absolute monarchy. After several more minor works of little consequence, Hobbes mustered all his strength in depending on the dominant political treatise of the age. This work he would name after a powerful deep-sea creature depicted in the book of Job, Leviathan. The style of Hobbes was pithy, idiomatic, forceful, and direct, with now and then a tang of pointed irony. He did not partake in the pretensions so common in the philosophic craft. He rather preferred clear and direct terminology. Words, he said, are wise man's counters. They do not but reckon by them. But they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas. This may seem to us a little ironic in that his definition of philosophy is different than how we today choose to define it. He states that philosophy is the knowledge of effects or of appearances acquired from the knowledge of their causes and conversely of possible causes from their known effects. In his reasoning, he prefers deduction from experience or true radiosynation rather than the inductive form practiced by Francis Bacon. But reason he concedes is imperfect and can lead us away and not toward ultimate understanding. A knowledge of how the mind understands and what limits are placed on our natural understanding is necessary if we are to reach the conclusions which bring practical benefits to the human race. He places sensation as the indispensable antecedent of all knowledge and states that there is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. We take sensation and make connections between things and do not, as some suppose, know them directly or absolutely. He stated that no man can know by discourse, reasoning, that this or that is, has been or will be, which is to know absolutely, but only that if this be, that is, if this has been, that has been, if this shall be, that shall be, which is to know conditionally. He approached human nature mechanistically, meaning that the divine human is, at its core, a complex work of machinery determined to act as the laws of nature dictate. Motivating this machine is a profound desire for self-preservation, meaning that all action is at heart self-interested and in accordance with what may benefit the individual most. Decisions are not blind, but are guided by our rationality and through rational means we attempt to guide ourselves away from death or misfortune and toward what may provide the maximal benefit and joy. It is important to understand that the desire for self-preservation is not opposed to cooperation between human beings, though this cooperation will not be with altruistic intentions. Rather, it will be out of a desire to achieve personal security by recognizing that working as a collective makes defense from outside attack or natural misfortune more unlikely. Hobbes's psychology is an important prerequisite to our later look into his political theory. But first, let us uncover briefly his thoughts concerning ethics and morality. To begin, Hobbes believed that there are no moral absolutes and man in a state of nature would differ only in method from the meanest beast. Without society, there would be nothing but fear to inhibit his animistic urges. The life of man, as Hobbes famously said, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This makes Hobbes a moral subjectivist, meaning that what we perceive to be right or wrong are molded by the cultural and environmental information which we take in, and not, as was generally believed in his time, moral principles sanctioned and dictated by God. And as stated in our previous section concerning psychology, it is egoism and self-preservation, which, like in the individual, produces the proper moral views of a society. What constitutes what is categorized as good or bad regarding moral judgment is entirely dependent upon their utility within the society in which and for which they were created. This deterministic view on morality means that the human will is consequently not free. But he contends that society should and is justified in encouraging some actions and discouraging others for the express reason that some actions lead to increased security and prosperity of the group while others do not. More about his ethics will become clear as we step foot into the murky waters of politics. Much of what will be discussed regarding his political beliefs will be taken from his 1651 work, the Leviathan, also called the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. It was a momentous work, not all original, strains of Machiavelli can be heard throughout, but it was a work which would help to shape the political discourse of the Western world. We will start as he did with what he describes as the state of nature, meaning the state of human life prior to organized societal structures. It was a sorry state of affairs and consisted predominantly of sorrow, misery, and constant fear. It was a state of perpetual war of every man against every man. In Hobbes' view, the state of nature can exist in no other way. And what dictates this certainty is as described before, the innate desire for self-preservation. Without what we are all accustomed to, that being societal control by higher authority and the societal contracts which enable it, man would look out only for himself and what brings him closer to fulfillment of this one primitive desire to survive. It was a state in which human action is inhibited only by fear. We see much of this state of affairs, Hobbes believed, in the relationship between nations. He said, in all times kings and persons of sovereign authority, because of their independency, are in continual jealousies and in the state and posture of gladiators, having their weapons pointed and their eyes fixed on one another. That is, their forts, garrisons, and guns on the frontiers of their kingdoms and continual spies upon their neighbors, which is a posture of war. Where there is not a common power, there is no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war, the cardinal virtues. A constant state of war is not only when bullets are flying and swords thrusting, but also in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently shown. To solve this inborn issue of the human race and to arrive at some level of security, Hobbes suggests a social contract which the people form amongst themselves to concede their power to a greater authority in exchange for peace and security. To confer all their power and strength upon one man or upon one assembly of men, this done, the multitude so united in one person is called a commonwealth. This is the generation of the great Leviathan, or rather of that mortal God to which we owe under the immortal God, our peace and defense. This commonwealth may come about by natural power as when a man make it his children to submit themselves and their children to his government, as being able to destroy them if they refuse, or by voluntary agreement in search of security against all outside parties not associated with said contract. The picture of the ideal state which Hobbes painted is colored with the brush of absolute authority, though the sovereign Hobbes estate is not given his power by the divine right of kings, but by the people agreeing through a social contract to give up their power in exchange for the peace and security provided by this sovereign. But this power he wields cannot be limited by the subjects which are ruled over, not by popular assembly, church, or law. However, there are circumstances wherein this absolute authority can be questioned. For instance, if the sovereign directs one of his subjects to injure himself physically or by confessing to a crime under duress, which the evidence does not adequately support. This also means private property is allocated by orders of the sovereign for what is deemed by him alone as best for the public good. The need here for absolute power, Hobbes believed, is necessary because when power is shared between king and subject, there always arises conflict which will threaten to destroy the state. This monarchy will be hereditary as the right to choose who inherits power lies within the scope of our sovereign's power. He is willing to admit to governance by popular assembly, but the absolute nature of their power must not be questioned. Democracy, of course, is out of the question as he believed that a democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orders. In summary, our state will be without individual liberty. What the sovereign says is absolute outside of the few instances which we highlighted before. If revolution occurs and is successful in establishing a separate power or overthrowing the existing power, the subjects of the sovereign are obliged to join with the new established government since the obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long and no longer than the power lasted by which he is able to protect them. The final paragraph of the Leviathan reads as follows. And thus I have brought to an end my discourse of civil and ecclesiastical government occasioned by the disorders of the present time without partiality and without other design than to set before men's eyes the mutual relation between protection and obedience. Reaction to his impartial political theory was varied, but regardless of your views regarding the legitimacy of his theory, no one can argue the profound impact it had on his and subsequent generations of political philosophers. He lived some time after the publication of his magnum opus, but starting sometime around 1650, he developed palsy of the hands and by 1666 was unable to continue writing in an illegible manner. However, our vigorous philosopher would not cease to write because of this malady and wrote much about mathematics as well as some other works of history. He even published in 1675 on autobiography. He approached the end following a move which proved to be too exhausting for the aging philosopher and on December 4th, 1679, died at the age of 91. His influence was profound in many circles, whether this be of the positive or negative sort dependent on the person. But Bale ranked him as one of the greatest geniuses of the 17th century. Reading him Bacon and Locke or Fontenelle, Bale and Voltaire, we perceive again what the Germans had made us forget, that obscurity need not be the distinguishing mark of a philosopher and that every art should accept the moral obligation to be intelligible or silent.