Hobbes' philosophical path started in May 1630, in Geneva, when he became enamored of Euclid's geometrical method of reasoning, which for him was the model of scientific knowledge. In 1637, he wrote the Little Treatise, in which he tries to explain sense experience in terms of a general theory of motion. Meanwhile, his interests turned toward politics.
In 1640, after Parliament was dissolved, Hobbes published The Elements of Law. When Parliament reassembled, the royalist Hobbes fled to Paris, where he started work on the Elements of Philosophy, a three-volume work consisting of De Cive (1642), concerning the politics of civil society; De Homine (1658), an explanation of human thought, sensation, and desire in terms of bodily movement; and De Corpore (1655), outlining the principles of physical motion. During the civil war in England, he remained in France. After his return to London in 1651, Hobbes published his most famous work, the Leviathan, which argues that the preservation of peace requires an absolute sovereign.
Toward the end of his life, many people considered that the Plague and the Fire of London of 1666 were acts of God against an irreligious age, and Hobbes was accused of atheism. In his eighties, he wrote two autobiographies, one in Latin verse, as well as a verse translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In 1679, he died at the age of 91.
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