Essay Sample on Hobbes State of Nature

Introduction

Living under the state of nature is the one without a government, boundaries, and governing law. The state of nature "is the concept used to designate a period in the history of humanity, supposedly real or imaginary, opposed to the present situation of it. Because of its properties, halfway between the creation of reason and the relationship with time, it is a fundamental concept in political philosophy and many philosophies of history. Multiple meanings that the signifying nature contains in the doctrine expounded by Hobbes throughout the Leviathan, that of nature as a physical order. In principle, life would be equivalent here, therefore, to the set of the real as cosmos ordered and governed by universal and necessary laws. However, this meaning that Hobbes grants to the term nature become a principle request as it deepens into the text.

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In the first place, we find in Hobbesian thought two notices that will greatly enlighten the meaning of the indicated purpose. And it is that the doctrine of the English thinker revolves around two particular axes: radical nominalism and physicalistic mechanism. From the reading of the text it is clear that reality, from the Hobbesian perspective, would not be more than a set of monads (or, if you like, of individual bodies), whose essence would be limited to two primary qualities: quantity and movement, understood as local displacement. Nature, then, is no more than a set of individuals in mechanical interaction.

The idea of the state of nature that has become more popular in Western thought has been the one that inspired modern philosophy from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and, in general, the Enlightenment. These authors interpreted the state of nature as a situation in which the absence of norms prevailed, the lack of government and the law of force. It was not an asocial state if we understood each other so that within it there were no relationships between men; however, it was not a state of full sociability, since in its interior an organized society capable of exercising itself was not conceived what Weber called the monopoly of violence. Although it was not a state of unlimited license, they do not seem to have understood it as subject to the laws of moral obligation; instead, self-interest seems to be the rule that guides the ethical behavior of the subjects. The state of nature, therefore, is, in short, the condition by which men had to pass before arriving at the formation of civil or political society. The latter get adorned with the attributes for which Western thought has been most appreciated since the seventeenth century: the exercise of authority, the rule of order, the social hierarchy, favorable laws, the renunciation of the practice of violence as a source of resolution of internal problems and the domination of reason as the ultimate foundation of human behavior. On the contrary, the state of nature was considered a situation from which it was necessary to escape, either by the struggle of all against all that took place in it (Hobbes, 2016) or by the case of threat and collective insecurity suffered by members (Locke, 1974). The passage from one state to another seems to have been conceived as an act of rationalistic voluntarism that would lead to the contract or social pact and the following establishment of a society administered by a civil government (sometimes, an absolute monarch).

In the state of nature, peaceful coexistence dominated. In the state of innocence, gentleness reigned among individuals. The wars were unknown, and the total lack of needs and obligations made them unnecessary. Only after losing that enviable situation did man know what misery, inequalities, and exploitation of one another were. All this would put an end to peace. As Soto says, "of necessity, first necessity was followed, and wars were developed without a story, which reduced men to slavery.

State of nature is an institutional state. Higher political organizations, like the state, which embodied the prince, did not exist in its midst. Since it was unnecessary to dictate laws, there were no judicial bodies or magistrates to judge their compliance. The scholastics were aware, however, of the difficulty that a society of these characteristics could last for a long time and even admitted the possibility that, if the sin had not ended with that situation, they would have ended up making their appearance laws and norms that every well-ordered society demands. To solve this institutional vacuum, they maintained that in the state of nature, society was structured around natural groups such as the family or the patriarchal government, and that, as Vitoria said, there might be some organization dedicated to the cult. Despite the absence of political laws and political authorities, the man acted correctly. Human beings were carried away by their impulses, and these did not imply selfish actions or fall under the tyranny of sensuality. Without the threat of sin, man behaved according to what morality demands. The only existing law, the natural one, was fulfilled in its integrity without God being forced to write it outside the human soul. The men carried it implicitly and executed it with the same ease with which they currently satisfy their dream or their appetite.

Thomas Hobbes in his philosophical works states that the life of a human being is solitary, brutish short and full of challenges. This fact brings in the need for a structure meant to govern people. Without this body, people would fight in search of more wealth than they have. A government is established to ensure affairs in a country are run in order.

Due to the lack of balance in the distribution of resources, the level of needs varies from one group of people to another in a society. This factor may result in conflict between people. The disputes may be within the civilizations or between different cultures. The government becomes a necessity in such situations in protecting the individual, societal groups. The government provides policies that govern the public in case people hurt each other. These policies are rules governing individuals, sometimes referred to as the rule of law. The government also plays the role of caring for its citizens. In case of natural calamities, the government provides the necessary aid to the affected people.

The set rules are compiled into a system called law representing regulations for state members. Unlike rights, once the law is broken, there are penalties imposed as consequences. Human Rights are a set of morally correct values of justice which are honorable.

Conclusion

In a state of nature, every individual is equal to each other. There are no class differences unlike in government state. Everybody in this kind of country has set rules of natural rights known to everybody "by reason" in government state, the law is in records, and penalties for specific violations well recorded. In a state of nature, there is no convention for the degree of the sanctions deployed to culprits. An arbitrary punishment falls hard to the people found on the wrong side of natural rights. A government sets its rules that govern the state, but in a state of nature, every individual is on one's own. It is everybody's responsibility to secure own personal preservation.

References

Hobbes, T. (2016). Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan (Longman Library of Primary Sources in Philosophy). Routledge.

Olivecrona, K. (1974). Appropriation in the State of Nature: Locke on the Origin of Property. Journal of the History of Ideas, 211-230.