Hobbes  (hŏbz)  English philosopher and political theorist best known for his book Leviathan (1651), in which he argues that the only way to secure civil society is through universal submission to the absolute authority of a sovereign. Hobbes'i·an adj. |
A seventeenth-century British political philosopher; the author of Leviathan. According to Hobbes, human life in a “state of nature” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” He argued that government must be strong, even repressive, to keep people from lapsing into a savage existence.