•Applied rational analysis to the study of government
•Attacked the concept of divine right, yet supported a strong monarchy
•Believed that humans were basically driven by passions and needed to be kept in check by a powerful ruler
•Without a monarch to exercise control, Hobbes wrote that people’s lives would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
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Englishman Thomas Hobbes was one of the first thinkers to apply rational analysis to the study of government. In his famous work Leviathan, Hobbes attacked the notion of the “divine right of kings,” which held that monarchs ruled because they had been appointed by God. Instead, he believed that a ruler derived sovereignty from the implicit consent of the people. Not surprisingly, this radical concept met with near-universal disdain.

Although it seemed to many that Hobbes was attacking monarchy, in reality he favored having strong, authoritarian rulers because of conclusions he drew about human nature. Hobbes somewhat pessimistically believed that people were driven by their passions, and that only a powerful ruler could keep society from degenerating into conflict and chaos. Without a monarch to exercise control, Hobbes wrote that people’s lives would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”