Embedded Files
Source # 1 - Video lecture explaining the importance of understanding philosophy when studying history - click here
Biography of Thomas Hobbes - Philosopher of Absolutism
Thomas Hobbes was born in 1588 and studied at Oxford University. He worked as a private tutor and traveled across Europe and met early scientists like Francis Bacon, Descartes and Galileo. In 1640, the English Civil War broke out between the British Parliament (like our legislature) and King Charles I. This violent conflict that tore England apart had a deep impact on Hobbes. During the civil war, Hobbes left England to escape the fighting and lived for eleven years in France under the rule of Louis XIV. He worked as a tutor to the future king of England, Charles II. It was during this time that he developed his ideas about government and power. While he criticized both sides of the English Civil War, he supported the king over Parliament, but he also denied that the king was given his right to rule from god. Hobbes believed that government was based on a “social contract” or agreement between the government and the people in which the government protects people and, in exchange, the people are obedient to the government.
In 1651, Hobbes returned to England and published his book The Leviathan, which explained why Hobbes supported the absolute power of kings. The title of the book referred to a leviathan, a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole ships. Hobbes likened the leviathan to a government, a powerful state created to impose order. He saw the king as a necessary figure of leadership and authority. He felt that democracy would never work because people are only motivated by self-interest. He saw humanity as being motivated by a constant desire for power, and to give power to the individual would result in a war of every one against the other that would make life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes believed that, to prevent people from fighting and killing each other all the time, they needed a strong leader like an absolute monarch to keep peace.
Source # 2 - Video lecture explaining Hobbes' philosophical justification for absolutism - click here
Classwork Source # 1 - Title page to The Leviathan (1651)
Classwork Source # 2 - Historian's Perspective of Absolute Monarchs
Historian John Miller described the importance of the absolute monarchs, like Louis XIV, by saying, "Absolute monarchies helped to bring a sense of nationhood to disparate territories, to establish a measure of public order and promote prosperity... we need therefore to jettison the liberal and democratic preconditions of the twentieth century and instead think in terms of an impoverished and precarious existence, of low expectations and submission to the will of God and the king."
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