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state of nature, in political theory, the real or hypothetical condition of human beings before or without political association. The notion of a state of nature was an essential element of the social-contract theories of the English philosophers Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques ...
Feb 1, 2024 · Hobbes' State of Nature. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes can lay claim to creating some of the most distinctive and memorable statements about the state of nature. For Hobbes, humans in the state of nature are concerned with one thing only, their self-preservation.
Feb 12, 2002 · Hobbes argues that the state of nature is a miserable state of war in which none of our important human ends are reliably realizable. Happily, human nature also provides resources to escape this miserable condition.
Jul 14, 2021 · Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). 1. The State of Nature. Hobbes imagines what life would be like in the “state of nature,” a hypothetical world without governments. Hobbes thinks all humans are equal when it comes to matters of survival. Nobody is powerful enough to be immune to attack.
Thomas Hobbes. The pure state of nature, or "the natural condition of mankind", was described by the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan and his earlier work De Cive.
Hobbes’s state of nature thus emerged as the condition that any rational individual would wish to avoid. His successive images of anarchy reveal a consistent strategy aimed at rendering the natural condition of mankind a credible encapsulation of the perils of disobedience.
It is generally argued today, however, that Hobbes designed his state of nature as a logical and reductionist device that was to dem- 2 John Bramhall, A Defence of True Liberty from Antecedent and Extrinsicall. Necessity (London, 1655), 107.
May 16, 2023 · Hobbes created the state of nature, the condition in which people live before the establishment of the civil state, as the civil state’s polar opposite. In its purest form the state of nature represents savagery, constant danger of violent death, and moral...
Nov 27, 2023 · Hobbes famously took a negative view of human nature and the human condition, stating that before societies were formed, in what he described as the state of nature, "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" ( Leviathan, ch. 13).
Mar 11, 2009 · In philosophy, he defended a range of materialist, nominalist, and empiricist views against Cartesian and Aristotelian alternatives. In physics, his work was influential on Leibniz, and led him into disputes with Boyle and the experimentalists of the early Royal Society.
