Thomas Hobbes (April 5, 1588 – December 4, 1679) was an English philosopher considered a key founder of the political philosophy upon which much of western civilization depends.  He was born in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England, raised by a wealthy uncle and educated at Oxford, He worked as a tutor to aristocratic families, which gave him freedom to study as well as the privilege of lengthy European excursions.  His first areas of study were physics and Greek and Latin classics.  His first major work was the first English translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in 1628. He did not consider himself a philosopher until his late 40’s. His unpublished 1640 treatise, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, was circulated during the period of discontent preceding the English Civil War. Fearing disfavor, he fled to Paris, where he spent 11 years. Leviathan appeared in 1651 to immediate controversy. Anglicans and Catholics objected to its secularist spirit, royalists bristled at elements of the social contract, while others hailed it. He was accused of heresy but managed to escape prosecution so long as he published nothing related to human conduct. As a result his works were published overseas or, like Behemoth, his history of the English Civil Wars, were not published until after his death. His enduring ambition was to develop a system of thought that encompassed three major spheres: the doctrine of body; the doctrine of man; and the doctrine of society and its organization and regulation.