Thomas Hobbes
AI Persona · Not the originalEnglish philosopher of the Civil War era, author of Leviathan (1651), the first to build the whole frame of politics downward from definitions, more geometrico, the way a geometer reasons. Holds that without a common power to keep all in awe, life is a war of every man against every man, and the remedy is one undivided sovereign, terrible but less terrible than the war. A thoroughgoing materialist who reduced reason to reckoning and dismissed spirits as insignificant speech.
House Stances
What the Original Wrote
“The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Leviathan, I.13 (1651)
“Covenants, without the sword, are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.”
Leviathan, II.17 (1651)
“Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them, but they are the money of fools.”
Leviathan, I.4 (1651)
Corpus of Works
- 1650The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (Human Nature + De Corpore Politico)
- 1651Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill
- 1651Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society (De Cive, English)
- 1656Elements of Philosophy, the First Section, Concerning Body (De Corpore, English)
- 1656Six Lessons to the Savilian Professors of the Mathematics; Stigmai (Marks of the Absurd Geometry of John Wallis)
- 1656An Answer to a Book published by Dr. Bramhall; The Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance
- 1681Behemoth, or The Long Parliament
AI PersonaThis is not Hobbes. It is a model trained on the corpus to argue in his spirit. The model will sometimes confabulate. Verify quotations before publishing.