Would Life In A State Of Nature Be Nasty, Brutish

Would life in a state of nature be ‘nasty, brutish, and short’?

For more than three centuries the mere mention of ‘The State of Nature’ (a state of being where people are void of any form of political authority) has been a source of controversy for academics. However, one must still venture and question whether Hobbes’ famous view of “The life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” , for Hobbes disregarded the bias of his own preconceptions and painted the State of Nature as inhabited by what we will call ‘Political Man’; this being merely a term to describe a person whom having lived all his life under a Political Authority is suddenly thrust into the State of Nature.

Now, you might ask ‘why is this important?’, ‘why are so many

While most people are agreed on this claim and often use it when stating that we should treat everyone with respect Hobbes takes this in a different direction. Though he does not disagree with this Hobbes claims that in the State of Nature rather being beneficial equality leads to War or at least a constant readiness for it. As there can be no insurmountable difference between the weakest and strongest man Hobbes argues that this in turn will lead to a never-ending feeling of fear or insecurity, prompting people to pursue a policy of preventive strikes. Hobbes’, belonging to the 15th century draws on Galileo’s Laws of Motion for this conclusion. For Hobbes these were the basis for many of his thoughts on human nature. Hobbes claimed that due to this, humans will constantly be searching for happiness but never achieving it leading to conflict with each other as “there is no Finis Ultimus or Summum Bonum” . Through the rebuttal of the idea that humans must always be in motion and consequently never achieve happiness we find that Hobbes is indeed too pessimistic as people often find happiness in exactly what Hobbes argues we would reject in the state of nature; other people. Since before the advent of modern political systems people have been drawn together by instinct, and as David Hume put it “It cannot be disputed that there is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for

This could prove to be very true as in the State of Nature though not solitary, man would not group with many more people than family and those in his immediate proximity which would certainly slow down scientific development.

Finally, we come to Hobbes’ last bastion; scarcity of resources. Hobbes argued that being egoistic and selfish in nature (which we’ve already disputed) we would fight over the limited resources in this Earth. In retrospection we can see however, that the world has more than enough resources for everyone much more for the smaller population of Hobbes’ era.

In conclusion, while life in the State of Chaos may be confusing and dangerous to Political Man the State of Nature would not be “nasty, brutish, and short”1 as at our core human beings are driven by empathy and have recognised cooperation as more beneficial than violence towards survival and