“A colossal, monarchic figure rises above the landscape, dwarfing the city below him.” Explains the text. Here’s how we describe that famous artwork, made for his book, which he created with the French printmaker, Abraham Bosse, in our survey of corporeal creativity, Body of Art. He also realised how he could express the great power of the concerted masses in a single image. He wrote his most famous book, the Leviathan, during the English Civil War, and understood why, in banding together into a "body politic", people could lead better, longer, and more civilised lives. Hobbes, who was born on this day, 5 April, in 1588, had seen such a society at first hand. He believed that life, free from government – in the "state of nature", as he put – is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Yet, without government, what would our lives be like? Thomas Hobbes, one of the founders of modern political philosophy, had a fairly good idea. Today, many view governments suspiciously, and question the good that they provide. The political philosopher, born 430 years ago today, put a face to the-then novel theory of the ‘body politic’ Detail from the frontispiece for Leviathan (1651) by Thomas Hobbes, etching by Abraham Bosse.Īs reproduced in Body of Art How Hobbes first pictured the “monster” of good government
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