1989
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Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first great English political philosopher, and his book Leviathan was one of the first truly modern works of philosophy. Richard Tuck shows that while Hobbes may indeed have been an atheist, he was far from pessimistic about human nature, nor did he advocate totalitarianism. By locating him against the context of his age, we learn that Hobbes developed a theory of knowledge which rivaled that of Descartes in its importance for the formation of modern philosophy.
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Author
Richard Tuck
Author · 5 books
Richard Tuck is Professor of Government Department. Professor Tuck is a premier scholar of the history of political thought. His works include Natural Rights Theories (1979), Hobbes (1989), and Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651 (1993). They address a variety of topics including political authority, human rights, natural law, and toleration, and focus on a number of thinkers including Hobbes, Grotius, Selden, and Descartes. His current work deals with political thought and international law, and traces the history of thought about international politics from Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Locke, and Vattel, to Kant. He is also engaged in a work on the origins of twentieth century economic thought; in it he argues that the 'free rider' problem was only invented, as a problem, in recent decades. Thus his interests to a remarkable degree span concerns in all subfields of the discipline.
