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State of nature. In ethics, political philosophy, social contract theory, religion, and international law, the term state of nature describes the hypothetical way of life that existed before humans organised themselves into societies or civilizations. [1] Philosophers of the state of nature theory propose that there was a historical period ...
Thomas Hobbes (/ hɒbz / HOBZ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. [4] He is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. [5][6]
Leviathan at Wikisource. Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651 (revised Latin edition 1668). [1][5][6] Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society ...
Bellum omnium contra omnes, a Latin phrase meaning " the war of all against all ", is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). The common modern English usage is a war of " each against all " where war is rare and terms such as ...
According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the "social", or society. Life was "anarchic" (without leadership or the concept of sovereignty).
He also very influentially described man's natural state (without science and artifice) as one where life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". [82] Following him, John Locke 's philosophy of empiricism also saw human nature as a tabula rasa .
Hobbes believed that this would be a violent and anarchic, calling life under such a state of affairs "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". [76] To prevent this, he believed that the sovereign of the state should have essentially unlimited power. [79]
Hobbes reasoned that this world of chaos created by unlimited rights was highly undesirable, since it would cause human life to be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". As such, if humans wish to live peacefully they must give up most of their natural rights and create moral obligations to establish political and civil society.