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To expand on your point: Hobbes was wrong on one count: Human life in a state of nature isn't nasty, brutish, short, or any of the other War Of All Against All
by cbd1984 10y ago
To expand on your point:
Hobbes was wrong on one count: Human life in a state of nature isn't nasty, brutish, short, or any of the other War Of All Against All nonsense he proposed unless there's been a serious disaster in the recent history, such as a plague or famine or invasion. In short, humans don't live like Mad Max or Walking Dead or Night Of The Living Dead unless their actual society was just destroyed and they haven't built a new one yet.
In a state of nature, humans live as hunter-gatherers, usually, which is not terribly bad most of the time. However, hunter-gatherer societies still have rules and ways to enforce those rules and hierarchies which are not fair by modern standards of fairness. Strict gender roles are usually enforced, for example.
My point is, humans naturally have a government of some kind, and definitely have rules which you can't opt out of if you expect to keep living with that group of humans. And it is entirely correct that humans raised in that society won't spontaneously recapitulate Locke and Jefferson. But they will have something, and they won't look kindly on people who expect to live outside of their rules and continue to interact with them.
And they certainly won't agree on which "rights" humans "naturally" have. Not even the right to live: A number of ancient societies practiced infanticide, for example.
- dragonwriter 10y agoYou say Hobbes is wrong, but you then acknowledge he was right: the state of nature only exists before they've rebuilt an ordered society. The state of nature Hobbes refers to isn't supposed to be the actual natural state of humanity in society, rather, it is the hypothetical state of humanity in the absence of ordered society.