Anachronistic crap that passes for philosophy. According to Hobbes, people are bad when left to nature. Therefore, the only way people can peacefully and productively coexist is under the rule of a sovreign who is totally unaccountable- whoever he/ she/ or they may be. I think this guy would have changed his tune had he lived to see Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam, et al. Sad that some still buy into this garbage.

His observation on the life of the common man: Nasty, brutish and short, is as appropriate today as it was when he wrote it.

The chains of bondage to the land and toil for survival have been replaced by an intellectual bondage to ephemeral pleasure.

Sometimes I think that the primary difference between commonality of today and that of Hobbes day is that today they are cleaner and don't work as hard.

Aside from their ideas and eccentricities, most philosophers are dreadfully boring. This was not the case with Thomas Hobbes: he traveled across Europe, met pretty much everyone worth meeting in the 17th century, was a notorious atheist (a criminal offense at the time) and worked actively into his 80s (his last major works were translations of Greek texts, Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey in particular). His work is nearly as interesting as his life: following the work of Francis Bacon, his mentor, Hobbes was the first philosopher to break entirely from the authority of sacred texts on which Western philosophy had previously been dependent (mainly Aristotle and the Bible). Hobbes made a lot of mistakes, most of them due to his overly simplistic theory of human nature (similar to 20th Century Behavioralism) from which he derives his overly simplistic theory of political authority. Despite its flaws, Hobbes' theory of politics describes the political dynamic of agrarian societies quite well. A supreme ruler, in whom absolute power must be vested to avoid the dangers of anarchy (whether by peasant rebellion or aristocratic/merchant conspiracy/civil war) describes the depressing history of human social organization from 3000BC to 1650AD with depressing accuracy. Hobbes wrote Leviathan around 1650, when England had emerged from Civil War, beheaded its king, and set up the general Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector-'King in all but name.' Hobbes saw the past and the present quite clearly; what he missed was the future-England's transformation into an oligarchial state, like Venice and Holland, where commercial wealth made a greater degree of political freedom possible. What Hobbes could not possibly have imagined are the industrial mass-democracies of today, where wealth and freedom is even more widely spread. The political theory of such states is described by John Locke, Adam Smith, and J.S. Mill, all of who had the advantage of writing after England had been transformed into a very different country than it was in Hobbes' time. Then, the great danger was anarchy; with the accumulation of capital and the development of technology, particularly military techonology, surveillance and propaganda, the dangers of tyranny have loomed much larger. Technology has not stood still: developments in the last 25 years seem to have strengthed sub-state groups (e.g. terrorists, gangs, mercenaries, corporations) at the expense of elected officials, state bureaucracies and standing armies. We may be heading back to a Hobbesian world, though it is too soon to say for certain.

This is a mixed bag for me, on one hand he refined the pleasure principle which is a wonderful new perspective from which to observe humanity and was somewhat of a sceptic of institutions of power. On the other he had this strange belief that mankind is in a constant war with itself and that the social contract is formed out of fear rather then love or empathy. Anachronistic a 21st century judgment as this may be: he's mostly a little too pessimistic for my tastes.

Did a little bit of Philosophy as an undergrad. The thing with Hobbes is that you shouldn't view it from a 21st Century perspective. The guy lived through two English Civil wars and England's only true dictatorship. What Hobbes explains very eloquently is what it's like to live in Anarchy and why Dictatorship is preferable. In fact Hobbes is probably very useful reading for troops in Iraq since it's a similar politically unstable situation.

Hardline Ultra-nationalist and Monachist. So for this reason I call him a Fascist.