The State of Nature

Okay, now that you have settled into Hoose library and ageed on a fair way to allocate XP amongst yourselves, you are going to need to deal with the consequences of the fact that civil society has broken down and there is no longer any government that can enforce rules or adjudicate disputes amongst you.

It turns out that philosophers have reflected on the significance of the difference between life in the state of civil society - in which we have a ruler or government that can enforce laws and carry out policies - and life in the absence of any state. The latter is often referred to as the ‘state of nature’. We will read from three different state of nature theorists over the next three weeks.

State of nature theorists typically try to characterize what life would be like in the absence of government in order to try to explain why we need government, or what the limits should be on what governments can appropriately do. Because these authors wrote on the assumption that we do not actually live in the state of nature, they were interested mostly in the state of nature only directly - for what it could tell us about what it is and should be like to live under a government. But since you all are now living under conditions under which the actual government and state power have broken down, you will naturally be interested in the state of nature directly - because you are now living, effectively, in the state of nature.

Thomas Hobbes is our first state of nature theorist this semester. Hobbes was active during and after the English civil war in the 17th century, and was deeply concerned about the breakdown of government during that conflict. So his writing in Leviathan was not intended to be merely abstract theory, but was a highly relevant discussion of issues that were important in his time.

The selection that we are reading does not come at the very beginning of the book, but rather from the very end of the long Part I of the book, which is called “Of Man”. Hobbes begins by giving us his theory of how human perception, thought, communication, and action work, and then builds up to explaining the distinctive problems that humans face in the state of nature, and why this means that there are certain natural rational laws that it is in everyone’s self-interest to obey.

We will be interested in what Hobbes thinks is distinctive of the state of nature, in order to help us see if it helps us understand the apocalypse, and in what he says these laws of nature - or rational principles - are, in order to see whether they really tell us what it is in each of your self-interest to do, and how it is rational for you to behave towards one another.

The following link will take you to the full text of Leviathan, but we will only be reaching chapters 13-16. Remember to read all of it and submit your TIOR writing exercise before midnight on Sunday.

TIOR Reminder

Once more, a reminder to please don’t forget to complete the reading and your TIOR writing exercise by midnight on Sunday and turn it in through the course Blackboard page through the appropriate link. I will stop putting reminders of this in each weekly assignment instructions after this week.