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Article: Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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HOBBES, THOMAS (1588
–
1679)
HOBBES, THOMAS
(1588
–
1679), English philosopher. Thomas Hobbes, perhaps the greatest of the English philosophers, was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, in 1588. The son of the disreputable vicar of Westport, he was raised by a wealthy uncle who saw to his education and his admission to Magdalen Hall, Oxford (B.A., 1608). After Oxford, Hobbes became tutor to the son of William Cavendish, the earl of Derbyshire, and remained attached to the Cavendish family throughout his life.
Hobbes's early association with Francis Bacon (1561
–
1626) strengthened what would become a lifelong dislike of Aristotelian philosophy that he had acquired at Oxford ...