Thomas Hobbes.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), thought he wrote on a wide range of philosophical problems, was primarily a political theorist, one of the earliest as well as one of the greatest English writers on the problems of government. Hobbes's ruthless depiction of the evils of "the state of nature" was used by him as central to his argument in favour of absolute rule: but, though few readers have ever been prepared to follow his argument to that unpopular conclusion, the relentless realism of his approach to problems of social organisation has exerted a continuous influence on later thinkers. His own thought was inevitably conditioned by his personal experience of civil war and political disorder, but has proved powerful enough to transcend the limitations of its historical origins: it also gains much from the striking, often ironic, epigrammatic style which is so apt an expression of Hobbes's temperament.

Casalino Pierluigi