4 ms·

This was a valuable read. I think a similar misunderstanding takes place with Hobbes's idea that the man in the state of nature lived in a war of all against a

This was a valuable read. I think a similar misunderstanding takes place with Hobbes's idea that the man in the state of nature lived in a war of all against all. There's simply no evidence that this ever happened, even though it has been used by Hobbes and others as a justification for the need of oppressive institutions. I think that if we start investigating the conceptual underpinnings of things quite a bit of economical and political thought will prove to be essentially unfounded and unscientific. This being said, we can't entirely fault people like Hobbes and Smith who didn't have access to the investigative tools that are now available. We can however fault today's social scientists who continue to build on faulty foundations instead of honestly reassessing their theories.

einpoklum 7y ago
To over-simplify, Hobbes' "man in a state of war" is a noble or land-owner, who needs to keep control of his property against the landless peasantry and opposing nobles. This is reminiscent of how, say, in Athenian democracy, a citizen was a male property owner - and most of the population just didn't count; most people were reduced to slavery (much due to debt actually!). Some of this conception persisted all the way up to the original US constitution - women don't count, slaves don't count but are property etc. As for faulting Hobbes - you can fault him plenty. There was critical anti-establishment practice and thought, always - in varying forms.