English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was born prematurely on this day 422 years ago, his birth being brought on by anxiety concerning the invasion of the Spanish Armada. After graduating from university, he worked for many years as a private tutor before becoming a philosopher and scholar. After studying the physics of motion and momentum from a philosophical rather than scientific point of view, he became one of the founders of the philosophy of materialism, which holds that the only thing which exists is matter.
However, it is for his work on political philosophy that Hobbes is most remembered today. When the English Civil War broke out in 1642 between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, many of the Royalists moved to Paris, and Hobbes started writing a book called Leviathan which explained his theory of civil government. The State is an artificial monster composed of men, created by the pressure of human needs and destroyed by civil strife arising from human passions.
Hobbes thought that a government-less existence would inevitably lead to uncontrolled conflict and lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” (perhaps a description of present-day Somalia). To escape this result, people form a social contract and establish a civil society, a population under a sovereign authority, to whom individuals cede their rights for the sake of protection.