Hobbes and the State of Nature
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"To this warre of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice, have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in warre the two Cardinall vertues. Justice, and Injusticeà are Qualities that relate to men in Society, not in Solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Propriety [property], no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but onely that to be every mans, that can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition, which man by meer Nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the Passions, partly in his Reason." -Hobbes, on the state of nature (66). The above quotation from Hobbes's The Leviathan exemplifies the state of nature, describing it as a realm in which our virtues are necessarily inverted to accommodate the demands of war. In this war of man against man, the rational pursuit of survival compels every individual to jealously guard his own security, lest he lose his life. Jean-Jacques Rousseau likewise considered the natural state of man when drafting his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Social Contract. Rousseau, however, did not consider the natural state of man to be so horrifically devoid of stability and fraught with peril as did Hobbes. Rousseau's answer
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"One tree is as good as another to shelter under, another fruit as good as the one I have just had taken from me" (166). Further, the simplicity of the natural condition cleanses a man of the pride that would, in civilized society, compel him to establish himself as a dominant or powerful figure; thus, all conflicts in the state of nature will be fleeting, driven by petty incidents of instant-gratification (Vaughan 164-168). In this sense, the natural man will, for Rousseau, possess the very security that Hobbes sought to bring man out of the state of nature in order to attain. Thus, though it may be true for both Rousseau and Hobbes that the state of nature is a realm of lawlessness, it is clearly a point of contention that this natural state will likewise produce a "war of every man against every man" (Hobbes 66).
In Hobbes, it has been noted that there is no summum bonum that motivates all men to action. There is, however, a summum malum: the threat of a violent death at the hands of one's fellow man. It is this ultimate "bad" that motivates all men in the state of nature. In the natural state, men use their reason to anticipate the actions of their neighbors; other men may set their sights on one's own hoard and atte
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Approximate Word count = 1911
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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