"Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish, and Short": The Hobbesian State of Nature

The title of this weeks newsletter is perhaps one of the most well-known and most cited quotes in all of the English language, and is attributable to Thomas Hobbes and his views on what is known as the state of nature. The state of nature is a hypothetical scenario wherein there are no nations, laws, institutions, governments, states, big businesses, or, in essence, no political society. A certain strain of political philosophers adopt this argument to make two points about human nature and political society. The first is that depending how humans are conceptualized by the philosopher in the state of nature will say something more fundamental about human nature. Are humans more prone to do whatever it takes to maximize their own self-preservation, or are they more prone to set aside their differences and work together? Your perspective on this, and your understanding of how humans behave in their 'natural condition,' will ultimately inform how we need to organize political society.

The crux of the argument is to contemplate what life would be like if we did not have the trappings of society that enable us to live as we do, given the premise that human nature is either good, bad, or neutral. What would life be like if there was no government? What would life be like if there was no police force? What would life be like if we had no medicine, science, law, internet, and all the creature comforts? As we will see, Hobbes does not think very highly of people in the state of nature. In fact, he thinks that we are just on the lookout for ourselves and no one else, and that we will do whatever it takes to secure our own self-preservation. In other words, Hobbes is a descriptive egoist, a person who thinks that at bottom, all human behaviour is motivated by self-serving desires and aims, we are all selfish. This is distinct from an ethical or normative egoist who posits that we ought to act selfishly, or that the right moral action is one that benefits us the most.

Absolute Equality

Hobbes most explicitly lays out his version of the state of nature in Part 1: Chapter 13 of his most famous political work the Leviathan¹. On the view of Hobbes, when we consider humans in a state of nature, we have to consider them from a place of absolute equality. Everybody is born naturally gifted with some particular talent, or skillset. On the one hand, we can recognize that these natural born talents and skills are natural differences between people. Some people are naturally stronger than others, and some are better at getting others to work with them towards a common goal. On the other hand, it is this natural difference between people that creates equality between them, on Hobbes’ view. Sure, the stronger could overpower the weaker, but the weaker might be able to get a whole bunch of people together to work with them to take out the stronger. Hence, in the state of nature, everyone is equal in the sense that they can best use their talents to their own advantages. Hobbes writes:²

Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of the body, and mind; as that thought there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable.

Hobbes then makes an interesting move to say that from this starting point of absolute equality, it will necessarily produce unequal outcomes. Why? Because if it is the case that we are all equal in ability, then we all have the same chances at pursuing and attaining the desires and goals that we have. But when two or more people desire the same thing that “nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and [on] the way to their end [their desired goal]….endeavour to destroy, or subdue one another.”³ For instance, lets say that two people in this state of nature want to eat the same kind of fruit. They both, on Hobbes’ view, possess unique talents that will help them achieve this goal, but there is only a limited amount of fruit to go around. It is clear to both of them that they both cannot share the fruit with one another, so they end up using their talents and skillsets to true and subdue one another so that the other has no fruit.

But think about this in a more political sense, is not our model of electing democratic representatives premised on something like this? Two candidates, who we presume are able to both equal in their ability to attain political office must use their unique talents to persuade the public and secure votes for themselves and their party, and become an elected representative, a position that only one of them can occupy. The candidate must attempt to eliminate, subdue, or in the catchy buzzword for Youtube videos, ‘destroy’ their opponents. This on Hobbes’ view, is a natural and logical consequence of the idea that in order to secure your own self-preservation in an area where there is a scarce and finite amount of resources, you will act selfishly and try “to master the persons of all men…till [you] see not other power great enough to endanger [you].”⁴ Our example of the two politicians going toe-to-toe is a great example for Hobbes because it highlights both the idea that given the right circumstances, our natural disposition is to act in accordance with our own self-preservation, desires, and aims; but it also highlights how much trouble and displeasure it produces for them when they are in this scenario. Clearly winning an election and being elected representative is much more preferable than having to battle it out with another candidate.

But why do we quarrel like this? Why is it that humans are so prone to battle one another like this for hierarchal positions? Well, at least on Hobbes’ view, it is just the consequence of our human nature. We have equal abilities, equal desires, unequal ability to share those desires, and thus unequal outcomes. But there are some identifiable principles here, at least Hobbes thinks so. These principles are that we are naturally competitive, naturally skeptical of our fellow humans and their motives, and that we naturally seek reputation and glory for ourselves⁵.

Given what we have laid out so far, it is quite clear that in this state of nature we operate on the most basic of instincts to maximize our self-preservation through acting selfishly and for our own gain.

State of Nature or State of War?

One of the most interesting ideas that Hobbes put forward in my view is his argument that the state of nature is a state of war. I think that we can agree that Hobbes’ framing of our ‘natural condition’ makes it out to be a not so enjoyable place. We can imagine people constantly battling it out for scarce resources, power, dominance, their own livelihood and self preservation. Hobbes even writes, in one of the most (in)famous and influential quotes in the English language, where in this state of nature “the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”⁶ But is it a war? Can we really say that this place where self-interest reigns supreme is also a war? Aren’t wars battles between armies, nations, or states with identifiable enemies and allies? This is what makes Hobbes’ argument here so interesting is that it greatly expands what we mean by war. He writes:⁷

[During] the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war…[War], [consists] not in battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of time, is to be considered in the nature of war; as it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature of foul weather, [lay] not in a shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: so the nature of war, [consists] not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. all other time is [Peace].

In other words, don’t think of war as an event or place, but as a period of time where there can be no assurance of peace between people. This is a monumental claim! It places an extremely high burden on achieving peace, and a relatively low burden on war. Lets ponder over it. If we take seriously the claim that war is a timeframe which consists not in actual fighting, but in merely a known disposition to, then it could be argued that under this Hobbesian definition we are STILL not in a time of peace. We might ask ‘What would peace actually look like for Hobbes?’ I think his insertion of the idea that without a common power to rule over us we are prone to be a state of war gives us a hint. We will explore this a bit more when we get to how Hobbes envisioned the social contract, or how we escape the state of nature/war and establish political society. For now, lets turn a skeptical eye towards some of the arguments Hobbes has put up this far.

Selfish All the Way Down?

We might express some skepticism towards the idea of how Hobbes has conceived of human nature, and this supposed natural condition in the state of nature as being one of perpetual war. Ought we not question the sort of self-interested agent (a philosophers word for human actor) that Hobbes constructs? We might say something like, ‘I could grant you (i.e. Hobbes) the argument that we are in some sense self-interested creatures, but we also have many altruistic qualities as well; ones that make us actually invested in being a fair, just, and equitable person. Is it not possible that I could put the value and satisfaction of another person over the satisfaction of my own self interests?’

Some strains of philosophers have argued just this point. Feminist approaches tend to point to the qualities involved in motherhood, and being a mother, as an argument against Hobbes. If it were true that we are just self serving creatures, Egoists, as they are called, then we would not have made it very far as mothers would fail to care for their offspring by placing their own needs above their newborn. This relationship between mother and child, so the argument goes, is direct evidence against the type of human nature that Hobbes argues for. Motherhood is inherently altruistic. In fact, Hobbes’s argument also tends to fly in the face of evolutionary science.

One of the traps we are prone to fall into when thinking about evolutionary science is to think that survival of the fittest = do whatever it takes to secure my own self-preservation to pass on my genes and create offspring. To be sure, this is in some narrow sense very true. But self-preservation is not the same as self-interest. In their book A Better Ape - The Evolution of the Moral Mind and How It Made Us Human, by authors Victor Kumar and Richard Campbell, the authors show that it is actually sometimes in our best interest to be self-sacrificing for others. Being altruistic in this way is actually more likely to help us work with others, benefit from the safety of groups, and pass on genes to offspring. If biological egoism is true, then it is equally balanced out by biological altruism. But how far do these criticisms take us? Have we done all this work just to undermine Hobbes’s argument?

Hobbes’s reply to the skepticism and objections we laid out above, while perhaps not as strong of a rebuttal as he might like, should give us pause to ponder how we actually think about others. He argues that we observe how we behave in our daily lives⁸. Think about all of the little actions you do that unconsciously express your views about human nature and what the inclinations of others are. Do you lock your doors to your home and car at night? Do you have all of your possessions secured away from the prying eyes of others? Do you keep secrets from other people? Do you lie (even just a little) to get what you want? At bottom, Hobbes thinks that through these tiny behaviours we prove to ourselves that we do indeed think other people would come take our things, rob us, or that its okay to lie to get what I want but not okay when others do it. And in doing so, we ultimately demonstrate that we are inherently motivated by self-interest. But this is no cause to blame people for this. People are just doing what they need to survive. He writes:⁹

[Neither] of us accuse man’s nature in it. The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions, that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them: which till laws be made they cannot know: nor can nay law be made, till they have agreed upon the person that shall make it.

In essence, we can’t hold people accountable for their actions until there are laws which forbid them from such actions. This is one of the more unique aspects of the social contract theory that I think strikes an interesting balance between moral relativism and objectivity. As we will see, for the Hobbesian morality is completely absent in the state of nature. It is the law, and by virtue the social contract which establishes the fuzzy boundary between law and morality.

“In such a war nothing is unjust”

I want to open this final section with a quote from the Government of Canada’s Department of Justice to get a glimpse into what life would be like without law:¹⁰

Imagine the chaos – and the danger – if there were no laws. The strongest people would be in control and people would live in fear. Drivers could choose which side of the street to drive on and no one could stop them. Imagine trying to buy and sell goods if no one had to keep promises. Or trying to hold onto your personal property or even to keep yourself safe if there were no laws against robbery or assault.

It is quite obvious that we still think that the absence of law and political society is tantamount to complete chaos. We can see the foundation for this statement above when Hobbes writes that the state of nature has both an absence of law and morality:¹¹

To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues. Justice, and injustice are none of the faculties neither of the body, nor mind…They are qualities, that relate to men in society, not in solitude.

As a result, we can see that Hobbes thinks it is only in political society that law and morality becomes established. In effect, Hobbes is a fan of political institutions because they curb our worst inclinations and subject them to the rule of law. As we will see next time, the scope and type of institution that Hobbes is a fan of may seem distasteful to our modern democratic sensibilities. But if you agree with Hobbes’s account of human nature as inherently selfish and self-interested, then maybe you too will become a Hobbesian by the end of this.

Conclusion

In summary, Hobbes offers us an interesting look into the elements of human nature by way of examining the state of nature. While his outlook on human nature is rather pessimistic, it gives us reasons to examine the motivations we construct to rationalize our own self-interest, and the nature of our politics. His views on starting from a place of absolute equality, the role of law and morality, and our inherent selfishness still shape our understanding of human nature and politics today. Agree with his views or not, he prompts us to give due consideration to examine our societal foundations and just how delicate the balance between liberty and collective well-being is.

1. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. John Gaskin, Oxford World Classic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

2. Ibid., 82.

3. Ibid., 83.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 84.

7. Ibid. Emphasis added.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 85.

10. Department of Justice Government of Canada, “What Is the Law - About Canada’s System of Justice,” September 7, 2016, https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/just/02.html.

11. Hobbes, Leviathan, 85.