Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hobbes

Historical Figure
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

English philosopher who viewed human nature as self-interested and life in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Detailed Definition
Hobbes’ bleak anthropology of human conflict and the necessity of social contract informed poetry of power, control, and the fragility of civilization, appearing in verse that depicts society as a fragile construct over primal chaos.
Example
Example in poetry:
Hobbes, political philosopher, inspires dystopian verse: "Hobbes said life is ‘nasty, brutish, short’—without Leviathan, chaos reigns"; A modern application: "In pandemic panic, Hobbes whispers: give up freedom for safety, or drown in anarchy"; A metaphor: "The social contract: a chain we wear willingly, said Hobbes, to avoid mutual slaughter"; A critique: "Too bleak, said Rousseau; society corrupts, doesn’t save"
Additional Notes
Hobbes viewed human nature as self-interested and life in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short”; his mechanistic worldview influenced Augustan satire and modernist poetry, where alienation, competition, and the absence of inherent meaning become central themes, as in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” reflecting a Hobbesian universe devoid of transcendent order.
Also Known As
Thomas Hobbes
Skip to main content