Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)

An English philosopher whose thinking, primarily presented in his work Leviathan, was deployed in order to distinguish the state of nature from the political state. Humans living in a dog eat dog condition, it was necessary to control original social violence by a strong power, which does not stem from God but from human beings themselves, concerned to curb this law of the jungle which threatened to devour them one after the other. From this springs a monarch – or a State – looming over a society neutralized by an ‘(imposed) non-aggression pact.’