Personal Enlightenment Philosophy I would like to know your opinion about the state of nature

Question

Using Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseaus views/philosophy on the State of Nature, if you were to write your own opinion/view on the world what would it be? What would you change? Be specific and use evidence so I can know if I would disagree (At least 1 paragraph or more since its a opinion/philosophy). I already did this for school, but I like seeing other peoples views on this topic. What would you exacly say in the state of nature of your philosophy just like these philosophers?

Answer 1

Here are three relevant passages from those thinkers, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

 

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time or 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.

 

Thomas Hobbes, Of the Natural Condition of Mankind, Chapter 13.

 

O understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.  A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.

 

John Locke, 2nd Treatise of Civil Government, chapter 2.

 

MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer.  If I took into account only force, and the effects derived from it, I should say: "As long as a people is compelled to obey, and obeys, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke, and shakes it off, it does still better; for, regaining its liberty by the same right as took it away, either it is justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for those who took it away." But the social order is a sacred right which is the basis of all other rights. Nevertheless, this right does not come from nature, and must therefore be founded on conventions. Before coming to that, I have to prove what I have just asserted.

 

Rousseau, The Social Contract, book 1.

 

 

So if you have to analyze these three and come up with a perspective of your own, you're going to have to decide whether or not you are generally an optimist or a pessimist about human nature.  Hobbes believed the world to be a chaotic place.  Rousseau thought it was beautiful until we imposed our suppressive social wills on one another.  And Locke believed that people were generally rational creatures who could be steered by a rational process.

 

I think people are far less in control of themselves than we pretend to be.  We know have access to worldwide examples of cultural structures.  Without an ordered maintained by mandatory structures, society ends up in the chaos of the will of the strongest.  But with mandated structures, dictators can still be pretty cruel and chaotic.  All of this supports Hobbes' view of nature.  Rousseau is rightly branded a romantic, or rather romanticism derives from Rousseau, because the idea that humanity in a state of humanity is, in any healthy way, free is a bit absurd.

 

And as to Locke, I haven't found us to be a particularly rational species.  To use a popular analogy, human reason and human feelings are like a man riding an elephant.  The man can steer it a little, but the elephant is really in control.  I find that people's emotions usually take control over and even manipulate their reason.

 

Hope this gives you something to work with, Sierra!