Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was a pioneer among pioneers, one of the founders of modern political philosophy, and his 1651 masterwork Leviathan still frames how we think about the state, the social contract, and that grim vision of life without order as a war of all against all. He was born in 1588 with an Aries Sun rising in the first house, a double dose of the Ram: the warrior-thinker who leads, who starts things, who never backs down. That Martian courage is written all over a man who took on scholastic tradition, sparred with Descartes, and dared to argue for absolute sovereignty in an England torn by civil war. With the Sun in the first house he shone by simply being himself, the fearless, blunt original who cast light and left a lasting mark wherever he went.

His Moon in Sagittarius made him the born philosopher whose peace of mind demanded freedom, travel and knowledge; he roamed Europe, met Galileo, and found emotional security only in the open road of ideas. Placed in the eighth house, that Moon plunged into death, rebirth and survival, the very themes his fear-haunted mind returned to. Born, as he said, a twin to fear, he made fear itself his lifelong subject.