Download or read book Hobbes: A Very Short Introduction written by Richard Tuck and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-05-30 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 rivalled that of Descartes in its importance for the formation of modern philosophy.