State of Nature

1
State of Nature

• Thomas Hobbes

2
Thomas Hobbes and the English Civil War

• 1588-1679
• Author of works in politics, geometry, and
  physics
• Most famous work Leviathan (1651)
• Advocate of King in the Civil War

3
English Civil War

• Tensions between Charles I and Parliament begin
  in 1620s
• Financial Issues
• Religious Problems
• Where does final authority lie?
• Charles Beheaded 1649

4
Human Nature

• Mechanistic and Materialist View of Sensation
• Appetites and Aversions
• Subjective Notion of the Good
• Egoistic Psychology

5
State of Nature

• Humans are equal in the ability to kill and harm
  each other
• Competition over goods
• Distrust leads to anticipatory violence
• Natural desire for glory over others

6
A War of All Against All

• In such a condition, Hobbes says, there is no
  arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst
  of all, continual fear and danger of violent
  death, and the life of man, solitary, poor,
  nasty, brutish, and short.

7
A Moral Vacuum

• To this war of every man, this is also
  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.

8
Do you agree?

• Are we naturally inclined to war?
• Do you trust your fellow humans?
• Do you lock your door when you leave your home?
• What is the solution?

9
Natural Rights

• The Right of Nature is the liberty each man has
  to use his own power, as he will himself, for the
  preservation of his own nature and to do
  anything which, in his own judgment and reason,
  he shall conceive to be the aptest means
  thereunto.

10
Liberty

• By Liberty is understood, according to the
  proper signification of the word, the absence of
  external impediments which impediments may oft
  take away a part of a mans power to do what he
  would, but cannot hinder him from using the power
  left to him according as his judgment and reason
  shall dictate.
• Natural Right is extended to all things.

11
Laws of Nature

• A natural law is a precept or general rule of
  reason by which a man is forbidden to do that
  which is destructive of his life.
• The first natural law has two branches to seek
  peace or to continue fighting if peace is not
  realistic.
• Remaining laws reveal the means to peace.

12
Origin of Commonwealth

• Every individual in the state of nature, to
  secure their own lives, must confer all their
  power and strength upon one man, or an assembly
  of men that may reduce their wills, by a
  plurality of voices, unto one will.

13
The Political Covenant

• This is more than consent or concord it is a
  real unity of them all in one and the same
  person, made by covenant of every man with every
  man, in such a manner as if every man should say
  to every man, I authorize and give up my right of
  governing myself to this man, or assembly of men,
  on this condition, that you give up your right to
  him and authorize all his actions in like manner.
  This done the multitude so united in one person
  is called a common wealth.

14
Political Absolutism vs Democracy

• Hobbess sovereign power is absolute
• Sovereign is in charge of all branches of
  government
• Sovereign cannot be replaced by a new vote