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7 unusual facts about Thomas Hobbes


Bill Watterson

Later, when Watterson was creating names for the characters in his comic strip, he decided upon Calvin (after the Protestant reformer John Calvin) and Hobbes (after the social philosopher Thomas Hobbes), allegedly as a "tip of the hat" to the political science department at Kenyon.

Gabriel's Horn

The apparent paradox formed part of a great dispute over the nature of infinity involving many of the key thinkers of the time including Thomas Hobbes, John Wallis and Galileo Galilei.

Joseph Cropsey

Thomas Hobbes (edited by Joseph Cropsey), A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (written between 1668 and 1675), Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 1997 ISBN 0-226-34541-6

Justin Champion

His research and teaching interests include the history of early modern ideas, blasphemy and irreligion in early modern Europe, Thomas Hobbes, Biblical criticism, urban disease, the history of reading and scholarship, and the use of information technology in the study of history.

Scientia potentia est

The exact phrase "scientia potentia est" was written for the first time in the 1651 work Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, who was secretary to Bacon as a young man.

Stranger King

The theory particularly builds on the English seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes' depiction of traditional indigenous societies existing in a state of 'Warre', envy, and conflict.

Thomas Hobbes

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.


1655 in literature

John Bramhall - Defense of True Liberty; Bramhall, an Anglican divine, begins a correspondence of treatises with Thomas Hobbes

Ethical egoism

Other philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes and David Gauthier, have argued that the conflicts which arise when people each pursue their own ends can be resolved for the best of each individual only if they all voluntarily forgo some of their aims — that is, one's self-interest is often best pursued by allowing others to pursue their self-interest as well so that liberty is equal among individuals.

Paul Vitz

The thesis of Faith of the Fatherless holds that famous believers—e.g., Blaise Pascal, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer—had strong and loving fathers, whereas their atheistic counterparts—e.g., Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Sigmund Freud, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler—all had fathers who were weak, unloving, or absent.

Popular sovereignty

Popular sovereignty in its modern sense, that is, including all the people and not just noblemen, is an idea that dates to the social contracts school (mid-17th to mid-18th centuries), represented by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), author of The Social Contract, a prominent political work that clearly highlighted the ideals of "general will" and further matured the idea of popular sovereignty.

Raia Prokhovnik

Her first degree was in political science and history from the University of New South Wales, Australia (1974), and her MSc and PhD, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Hobbes's Leviathan, are from the London School of Economics (1976 and 1980).

Walter Montagu

Sir Edward Nicholas reported to Edward Hyde in 1552 to Edward Hyde that Montagu and other Catholics were the cause of the exclusion from the exile court of Thomas Hobbes, a suspected atheist.

William Lucy

In 1657, William Lucy published an attack on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, and in particular on Leviathan (1651), using the pseudonym William Pyke, Christophilus, and circulated by Humphrey Robinson.


see also

1655 in literature

John Wallis - Elenchus geomeiriae Hobbianae, an attack on the work of Thomas Hobbes

Will Sharpe

Sharpe spent a year at the RSC and appeared in such plays as The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice and The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, in which he played a young Isaac Newton.