The Origins of Hobbes’s State of Nature

Abstract

I argue from The Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan that Hobbes constructed his state of nature drawing on an eclectic range of ideas – from Plato, Thucydides, Pyrrhonism and Chillingworth, and even Descartes. Sometimes he adapted themes and ideas from his reading and sometimes he reacted against them. His early humanist studies and work on Thucydides and Aristotle provided an important foundation. His account of primitive history was based on the ancient theory of historical progress, which he thought was validated by native Americans. The traditional view of the anarchy of civil war was a ready companion to this theory. He developed a theory of moral relativity based on Pyrrhonism, the Protestant exaltation of the individual conscience, and a radical theory of subjective natural right that seems to owe much to Fernando Vázquez. His novel theory of natural equality rejects the traditional juridical and theological idea for one that capitalizes on contemporary fear of social equality. Finally, his theory of the passions that produce the war of all against all are almost certainly drawn from Thucydides.