State of nature

Thomas Hobbes

The state of nature theory argues that there was a historical period when humans existed in a pre-social state. Each of the state of nature theorists view this pre-historical period differently based on their view of human nature. It was particularly prominent in the early modern period when European society was undergoing fundamental economic, political, and ideological change.

Theorists like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau apply Enlightenment philosophy and use the state of nature theory to address the type of social organization best suited to these social changes. The solution to the problems of the state of nature generally takes the form of a social contract in which citizens agree to certain restrictions on their liberty for the sake of security.

Definition

In ethics, political philosophy, social contract theory, religion, and international law, the term state of nature describes the way of life that existed before humans organized themselves into societies or civilizations.

Ancient example

Mozi

The early Warring States philosopher Mozi (470-391 B.C.E.) was one of the first thinkers in recorded history to develop a version of the state of nature theory. As with later thinkers like Hobbes, he developed the idea to defend the importance of government, in his case a single overall ruler, to solve the problem of anarchy. According to Mozi, prior to the rise of law and government each person has their own moral rules (yi, 義). As a result, people were unable to reach agreements and resources were wasted. Mozi promoted ways of strengthening and unifying the state (li, 利).

In the beginning of human life, when there was yet no law and government, the custom was "everybody according to his rule (yi, 義)." Accordingly each man had his own rule, two men had two different rules and ten men had eleven different rules—the more people the more different notions. And everybody approved his own moral views and disapproved the views of others, and so arose mutual disapproval among men. As a result, father and son and elder and younger brothers became enemies and were estranged from each other, since they were unable to reach any agreement. Everybody worked for the disadvantage of the others with water, fire, and poison. Surplus energy was not spent for mutual aid; surplus goods were allowed to rot without sharing; excellent teachings (dao, 道) were kept secret and not revealed. The disorder in the (human) world could be compared to that among birds and beasts.

His proposal was to unify rules according to a single moral system or standard (fa, 法) that can be used by anyone, calculating the benefit of each act. In that way, the ruler of the state and his subjects will have the same moral system. Cooperation and joint efforts will be the rule. Later his proposal would be strongly rejected by Confucianism (especially Mencius) because of their preference for social benefit over morals.

Early Modern Period

In the early modern period, humanism and Enlightenment philosophy contributed to the erosion of the old Medieval consensus based on the Great Chain of Being and the Divine Right of Kings. Philosophers looked to an alternative basis for society that relied not on authority but on human reason.

Thomas Hobbes

Seventeenth century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) described the state of nature, or "the natural condition of mankind," in his book Leviathan and his earlier work De Cive. Since each person was an individual and all were in the same situation, each person in the state of nature had an equal right to any good they desired. This naturally created conflict as people wanted to possess the same goods. Since natural inequalities between humans are not great enough to give anyone clear superiority, all must live in constant fear of that competition leading to violence.

According to Hobbes:

... in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; second, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first, maketh men invade for gain; the second, for safety; and the third, for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons, or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.

Within the state of nature, there is neither personal property nor injustice since there is no law, except for certain natural precepts discovered by reason. He famously called the human condition in the state of nature "a war of all against all," and described life in the state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." In this state, every person has a natural right to do what is necessary for preserving their own life. In order to mitigate these dangerous conditions, man in the state of nature needs to employ reason and follow the laws of nature. He argues that “every man, ought to endeavor peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war." and "that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth as for peace and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself."

Based on Hobbes' view of human nature, he did not rely entirely on reason alone. The possibility for conflict over the pursuit of goods can always potentially lead to violence. His solution to inevitable conflict required a strong state, the Leviathan, to enforce the laws and make peace. People need to enter into a social contract and give up some of their natural liberty for the sake of security.

John Locke

John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) addressed the state of nature in his Second Treatise on Civil Government written around the time of the Exclusion Crisis in England during the 1680s. Locke's state of nature was similar to Hobbes' but his assessment of human nature differed significantly. In the state of nature there was no government and people were roughly equal. All men were free "to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature." However, Locke disagreed with the Hobbesian idea that we are born with a fixed human nature that is fundamentally selfish. Locke famously referred to human nature as a "blank slate." Locke did not dispute the competition for goods and pursuit of self-interest, but did not share Hobbes’ pessimism about the inevitability of competition leading to violence.

While Locke understood that human beings would act in their own self-interest, he also believed that their actions could be moderated by reason. Locke believed that reason teaches that "no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, and or property." He believed in the Enlightenment view of natural rights and natural law, which guaranteed humans the right to life, liberty and property. He argued that humans are free to create their own destiny, guided by reason. He did not dismiss the temptation for people to act selfishly and even violently, but he emphasized that guided by reason, individuals were free to create their own character and to author their own destiny.

While Hobbes believed that a strong government was required to solve the conflicts that arose in the state of nature, Locke argued for the creation of civil society. The need for civil society comes in part from the perpetual existence of the state of nature. Locke's view of human nature was moderated by his Christian belief (unlike Hobbes, who saw good and evil as merely expressing personal preferences.)

In addition to rebutting Hobbes, Locke's treatises on government were also a refutation of the work of contemporaries like Robert Filmer. Locke's First Treatise is entirely a response to Filmer's Patriarcha, which supported the Divine Right of Kings.

Montesquieu

Montesquieu (1689-1755) made use of the concept of the state of nature in his The Spirit of the Laws, first printed in 1748. Like Locke, he also differed significantly from Hobbes. Montesquieu argued that before the formation of society, human beings would use their faculty of reason in the first place to preserve their life. Rather than engaging in violence, human beings in the state of nature would feel themselves to be impotent and weak. As a result, humans would not be likely to attack each other. In addition to fear, human reason would eventually form a social order and create a legal structure to protect them.

Montesquieu extended the logic of the state of nature to societies as well. Once society was created, a state of war would ensue among societies, which would all have been created the same way. The purpose of war is the preservation of the society and the self.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) offered a very different picture of life in the state of nature from his predecessors. Like Hobbes, Rousseau viewed human beings as mostly solitary figures in the state of nature. Like Hobbes and Locke, his view of the state of nature was predicated on his view of human nature. “The starting point of Rousseau’s philosophy, as it was for most seventeenth- and eighteenth century theorists, was human nature as it had originally existed.” His view of human nature differed dramatically from Hobbes'.

Rousseau argued that the state of nature was the ideal condition for human life. In the state of nature, mankind lived in natural harmony with one another and their environment. They were solitary, only interacting for the purpose of procreation, which apparently created no lasting bonds. For Rousseau, human nature is naturally good in its primitive state and more malleable than Hobbes’, which is fixed. They were not prone to violence. He has a romantic view of human nature that is often referred to as the noble savage, although Rousseau did not use the term.

Rousseau claimed that Hobbes was extrapolating the experience of humans in modern society and imposing that on humanity in the state of nature. He attributed the selfish behavior Hobbes believed to be inherent to human nature to life after the development of society, to the negative influence of civilization. Rousseau’s man in the state of nature is defined by two basic instincts – self-preservation and pitié, translated as pity or empathy or compassion. Rousseau calls it amour-de-soi-même, or self-love. This self-love is kind of instinctual, and Rousseau believes that pity is an extension of the instinct for self-preservation extended to other sentient beings – a kind of fellow feeling.

Rousseau argued that something happened to change humans from this tranquil, primitive state of contentment. The development of reason was the tipping point between human consciousness in the state of nature, and the development of self-consciousness which Rousseau equates with pride. Unlike his predecessors, reason was not the solution, but the source of the problem. Reason betrayed mankind's best interest. In addition to reason, the downfall of civilization was the development of private property. "The first man who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him’. What crimes, wars, murders, miseries and horrors would humanity have been spared if ‘someone who, uprooting the stakes or filling in the ditch, and shouted to his fellow men: Beware of listening to this man."

While Rousseau identified reason with the loss of the innocent state, he recognized that once humans developed self-consciousness, there was no going back. He believed that reason could be harnessed to create a just society but only by recognizing what he call the general will. He defined the general will as that which is in the best interest of all parties. It is the antidote to the individual will. "The general will is always right .. there is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will, the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account." Rousseau's philosophy was a major inspiration for Robespierre and the French Revolution.

Critiques

David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) argued in "Of the Origin of Justice and Property" that if humankind were universally benevolent, we would not hold justice to be a virtue: "’tis only from the selfishness and confin’d generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin." Despite his concession that supports Hobbes' assessment of human nature, he expressed skepticism about the historical facticity of the state of nature in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Human beings are naturally social. "'Tis utterly impossible for men to remain any considerable time in that savage condition, which precedes society; but that his very first state and situation may justly be esteem'd social. This, however, hinders not, but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the suppos'd state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never could have any reality."

Hume's ideas about human nature expressed in the Treatise suggested that he did not support either Hobbes' nor his contemporary Rousseau's arguments. He explicitly derided as incredible the hypothetical humanity described in Hobbes' Leviathan.

John Calhoun

An 1822 portrait of John C. Calhoun

Former United States Vice-President John C. Calhoun (1782-1850), in his A Disquisition on Government (1851), also point to the hypothetical character of the state of nature, arguing that the concept is self-contradictory and that political states naturally always existed.

It is, indeed, difficult to explain how an opinion so destitute of all sound reason, ever could have been so extensively entertained. . . . I refer to the assertion, that all men are equal in the state of nature; meaning, by a state of nature, a state of individuality, supposed to have existed prior to the social and political state; and in which men lived apart and independent of each other. . . . But such a state is purely hypothetical. It never did, nor can exist; as it is inconsistent with the preservation and perpetuation of the race. It is, therefore, a great misnomer to call it the state of nature. Instead of being the natural state of man, it is, of all conceivable states, the most opposed to his nature—most repugnant to his feelings, and most incompatible with his wants. His natural state is, the social and political—the one for which his Creator made him, and the only one in which he can preserve and perfect his race. As, then, there never was such a state as the, so-called, state of nature, and never can be, it follows, that men, instead of being born in it, are born in the social and political state; and of course, instead of being born free and equal, are born subject, not only to parental authority, but to the laws and institutions of the country where born, and under whose protection they draw their first breath.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883) criticized the accounts of thinkers like Rousseau as projections of contemporary society onto an imaginary past, rejecting the notion of a "fictitious primordial condition" as pseudohistorical, although he countered with his own primordial idea of primitive communism. Unlike Hobbes' fixed human nature, or Rousseau's belief that the ideal state for human beings was the state of nature, Marx's human nature would change depending on the relations of production.

Marx was a materialist and a collectivist who rejected the emphasis on the individual human. In Das Kapital, he argued that man is a social animal and that the "life-process of society" is based on material production. Marx used the term Gattunsgwesen (species-being) to describe human nature, which was determined by mankind's experience within specific means of production. Thus, the "essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations." He argued that it is through work that humans develop their "species-life." In his view what constituted human good is "the ability to structure the material world in accordance with their own purposes."

Legacy

Scholars dispute whether Rousseau's state of nature was meant to be historical or not. According to David Wootton, preceding social contract theorists treated the state of nature as a theoretical, not historical, condition. He argued that Rousseau approached the transition from nature to society as a historical reality. However, Frederick Neuhouser argues that Rousseau's account is no more than a philosophical device to separate the natural and artificial parts of human psychology.

John Rawls/Robert Nozick debate

John Rawls

John Rawls (1921-2002) and Robert Nozick engaged in a well-publicized theoretical debate in the 1970s about the nature of justice. Rawls used a variation of the state of nature and social contract theories in his book A Theory of Justice. Rawls uses a social contract-type thought experiment which he calls the "original position." He imagines that everyone is hypothetically placed in a pre-social veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing how they may benefit from society. People lacked foreknowledge of their intelligence, wealth, or abilities.

In this hypothetical situation, free, equal, rational, and unbiased individuals are given the opportunity to create the best possible society for themselves and everyone else. Rawls asserted that people living in the original position, when given the choice to live in any type of society, would naturally choose to live under the conditions of justice as fairness. Rawls reasoned that people in the original position would want a society where they had their basic liberties protected and where they had some economic guarantees as well. If society were to be constructed from scratch through a social contract between individuals, these principles would be the expected basis of such an agreement.

Robert Nozick

Rawls' Harvard colleague countered the liberal A Theory of Justice with the libertarian Anarchy, State, and Utopia, also grounded in the state of nature tradition. Nozick argued that a minimalist state of property rights and basic law enforcement would develop out of a state of nature without violating anyone's rights or using force. Mutual agreements among individuals rather than social contract would lead to this minimal state.

State of nature and international relations

In Hobbes' view, once a civil government is instituted, the state of nature has disappeared between individuals. Civil power exists to enforce contracts and the laws of nature generally. Between nations, however, no such power exists. According to Hobbes, the state of nature exists between countries. In international relations there is no law except for those same precepts or laws of nature. His view of the state of nature helped to serve as a basis for theories of international law and relations and even some theories about domestic relations.

In contemporary times, Rawls also examined the state of nature between nations. In his work the Law of Peoples, Rawls applies a modified version of his "original position" thought experiment to international relationships, arguing that peoples, not states, form the basic unit that should be examined. States should be encouraged to follow the principles from Rawls' earlier A Theory of Justice. Democracy seems like it would be the most logical means of accomplishing these goals, but benign non-democracies should be seen as acceptable at the international stage. Rawls developed eight principles for how a people should act on an international stage.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

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