Monday, April 7, 2014

Excerpt from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan

[In the state of nature] Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of War, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no Culture of the Earth, no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea, no commodious Building, no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force, no Knowledge of the face of the Earth, no account of Time, no Arts, no Letters, no Society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short . . .


In this excerpts from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes the “State of Nature” is a place and time under the following conditions: “No Knowledge of the face of the Earth, no account of Time, no Arts, no Letters, no Society, and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short . . .”. Hobbes considers the State of Nature to be a condition where people have no culture and act uncivilized. State of Nature is a setting where are no social contracts and the only interaction between mankind is a permanent state of conflict, fear and inclination to fight against each other, all of these because of the lack of a sovereign power mandating rules or imposing laws over people. 

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