I wonder if a more positive experience witrh government, or a more negative with the people, might go some way there. Hobbes was not read very much, or appreciated (that's how we get the idea he proposed absolute monarchy). But his argument looks pretty compelling from the vantage point of the 1640s, at least if you're a part of the ruling classes. However, by the 1690s, let alone the 1750s, most philosophes can look back at decades of relative calm in which you could easily conclude that people, left to their own devices, are reasonably nice while government, always coming up with ways of bothering them, is not.
Of course, "government" (i.e. central government) in eighteenth century Europe was pretty shambolic, as a rule. Local government, by contrast, usually worked reasonably effectively, but by the lights of most thinkers, that was more 'self-organisation'. I think if more poeople at the time had had first-hand experience of situations where either the absence of central authority led to local authorities collapsing, or where the presence of strong central authority saved the day, they might be more willing to take a second look at that particular tenet of Hobbes, and discover he had other interesting things to say. It's telling, though probably not decisive, to note that very few Prussian intellectuals ever embraced Rousseau's view of government, and that is not because Prussia had no enlightened thinkers.