Thomas Hobbes
English · 1588–1679
English philosopher best known for Leviathan (1651), in which he argued that life outside political society would be a "war of all against all" — solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short — and that to escape this state of nature, individuals consent to a sovereign authority via a social contract. His mechanistic view of human nature, his framing of the state of nature, and his pessimistic anthropology have shaped political philosophy ever since, often standing as the dark counterweight to Rousseau's noble savage.