The State of Hobbes's Nature

Abstract

We saw in the last chapter how Hobbes starts on his own construction of what he calls, using traditional terms, the ‘laws of nature’. As well as the laws of nature, Hobbes also describes what he calls ‘the state of nature’. For example, the place where he first proposes the foundational assumption of his law of nature – that ‘reason’ dictates ‘to every man for his own good to seek after peace’ – is in a chapter he calls ‘Of the estate and right of nature’ [ Elements , chap. 14]. Before the laws of nature come the rights of nature, and these rights are exercised in the estate, or state, of nature. This supposed natural state, or, more precisely, this condition of people without government, is called in Hobbes's next work, De Cive , the ‘state of nature’ ( statum naturae ) [Pref. 11]. Hobbes seems to have invented this useful term. He thinks that the state of nature is a state of war; as he puts it in the Elements , ‘the estate of men in this natural liberty is the estate of war’ [14.11]. That is, he thinks that the condition of people without government is one of active or potential conflict (for Hobbes includes under ‘war’ not only actual fighting but any ‘time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known’ [ Lev 13.8, p. 62]). So in Hobbes's state of nature, everyone is actually fighting or is threatened by fighting.