Before going up to Oxford, Hobbes translated Euripides' Medea from Greek into Latin verse. The principal, John Wilkinson, was a Puritan and had some influence on Hobbes. Hobbes was a good pupil, and between 16 he went up to Magdalen Hall, the predecessor to Hertford College, Oxford, where he was taught scholastic logic and mathematics. was educated at Westport church from age four, passed to the Malmesbury school, and then to a private school kept by a young man named Robert Latimer, a graduate of the University of Oxford. As a result, the family was left in the care of Thomas Sr.'s older brother, Francis, a wealthy glove manufacturer with no family of his own. was involved in a fight with the local clergy outside his church, forcing him to leave London.

Hobbes's father was uneducated, according to John Aubrey, Hobbes's biographer, and he 'disesteemed learning.' Thomas Sr. Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that 'my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.' Hobbes had a brother, Edmund, about two years older, as well as a sister, Anne.Īlthough Thomas Hobbes's childhood is unknown to a large extent, as is his mother's name, it is known that Hobbes's father, Thomas Sr., was the vicar of both Charlton and Westport. Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. Thomas Hobbes ( / h ɒ b z/ HOBZ 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher. Most of subsequent western political, legal, and social philosophy

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes