Political Ideas - Thomas Hobbes: Hobbes's Life and Times (MASSOLIT)

This entry is a curriculum-linked video lecture from MASSOLIT titled "Hobbes's Life and Times," delivered by Prof. Jeffrey Collins (Queen's University, Canada). It forms the first module of the course "Political Ideas - Thomas Hobbes" and introduces Hobbes's biography, education at Oxford, and the intellectual contexts that shaped his thought.

The lecture situates Hobbes within Humanism and the "New Science," outlines his mechanistic view of human beings as "matter in motion," and explains how these ideas feed into his major work, Leviathan. The broader course moves from historical context (the English Civil War) to close readings of Leviathan, Hobbes's account of the social contract, the nature and powers of the sovereign, and themes of liberty and disorder, concluding with Hobbes's influence on later political thought.

The resource is aimed at secondary students (GCSE, A Level) and IB learners and is accessible via the MASSOLIT platform; to view the full course you must sign up or log in to MASSOLIT.