Thomas Hobbes

:This article is about the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. For information on the Bill Watterson comic strip featuring a tiger named Hobbes, see Calvin and Hobbes.

Later life

As well as his ill-founded and controversial writings on mathematics and physics Hobbes continued his philosophical works. From the time of the Restoration he acquired a new prominence, "Hobbism" became a fashionable creed, which it was the duty of "every lover of true morality and religion" to denounce. The young king remembered Hobbes and called him to the court and bestowed on Hobbes a pension of £100.

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The king was important in protecting Hobbes when in 1666 the House of Commons introduced a bill against atheism and profaneness. On October 17 it was ordered that the committee to which the bill was referred "should be empowered to receive information touching such books as tend to atheism, blasphemy and profaneness... in particular... the book of Mr. Hobbes called the Leviathan." ({{Web reference|title=House of Commons Journal Volume 8|work=British History Online|URL=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=26780|date=January 14|year=2005}}) Hobbes was terrified at the prospect of being labelled a heretic, and proceeded to burn some of his compromising papers. At the same time he examined the actual state of the law of heresy. The results of his investigation were first announced in three short Dialogues added as an Appendix to his Latin translation of Leviathan, published at Amsterdam in 1668. In this appendix he aimed at showing that, since the High Court of Commission had been put down, there remained no court of heresy at all to which he was amenable, and that nothing could be heresy except opposing the Nicene Creed, as he maintained Leviathan did not.

Related Topics:
1666 - House of Commons - Heresy - Nicene Creed

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The only consequence that came of the bill was that Hobbes could never publish anything on subjects relating to human conduct. The 1668 edition of his works was printed in Amsterdam because he could not obtain the censor's licence for its publication in England. Other writings were not made public until after his death including Behemoth: the History of the Causes of the Civil Wars of England and of the Counsels and Artifices by which they were carried on from the year 1640 to the year 1662. For some time Hobbes was not even allowed to respond, whatever his enemies tried. Despite this his reputation abroad was formidable, and noble or learned foreigners who came to England never forgot to pay their respects to the old man.

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His final works were a curious mixture. An autobiography in Latin verse in 1672. A translation of four books of the Odyssey into "rugged" English rhymes in 1673 led to a complete translation of both Iliad and Odyssey in 1675.

Related Topics:
Odyssey - Iliad

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In October 1679 a bladder disorder was followed by a paralytic stroke, under which he died, in his ninety-second year. He was buried in the churchyard of Ault Hucknall in Derbyshire, England.

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