Question

How does Hobbes perceive the "state of nature" as contributing to his work? How does Rousseau see it? Which of these thinkers do you agree with most? Explain your position using course materials.

Answer 1

• The extremity of Hobbes’ state of nature is typified as the “warre of every man against every man”. This one line sums up the severity of the scenario presented by Hobbes and informs why the life of man must be “nasty, brutish and short”.
• This position of Hobbes is arrived at in a systematic way that perhaps makes him the father of political science. Such a scientific approach is none more evident than in his invocation of Galileo’s theory of the conservation of motion: that whatever is in motion will remain so until halted by some other force. In terms of human agency Hobbes viewed motion as producing delight or displeasure within us.
  
• Hobbes saw men as roughly equal. Although one man may be physically stronger than another and one smarter than another, these differences do not produce any sort of natural hierarchy.
• In terms of intellectual equality Hobbes describes how any given man will often believe himself to be more wise than most others. Yet it cannot be logically possible for most men to be more wise than most others. In fact Hobbes points out that if each man thinks himself wiser, then he must be contented with his share and there is no “greater signe of the equal distribution of any thing, than that every man is contented with his share”.
• Hobbes clearly has had a major impact on modern political philosophy; yet, because scholars frequently depict him as an advocate for a government with unlimited powers, he is frequently overlooked in the light of his contemporaries, namely Locke and Montesquieu, whose theoretical regimes can be characterized as more "democratic" and therefore more "just."
• However, judging him as a product of his own time, he clearly offers a framework which would allow human beings to rise above their natural state of chaos and fear to form a productive society.
• Considering the political climate in which he lived,English society involved in political climate and religious conflicts, a civil war, and the continual questioning of governmental authority, one might deduce that his real objective is to provide real stability.
• In a final analysis, perhaps the best way to summarize Hobbes is to say that if given the choice between the State of Nature and any form of government, clearly government is the better choice to allow individuals to pursue their own happiness and to prosper.
• The idea of the state of nature was also central to the political philosophy of Rousseau. He vehemently criticized Hobbes’s conception of a state of nature characterized by social antagonism.
• The state of nature, Rousseau argued, could only mean a primitive state preceding socialization; it is thus devoid of social traits such as pride, envy, or even fear of others. The state of nature, for Rousseau, is a morally neutral and peaceful condition in which mainly)solitary individuals act according to their basic urges (for instance, hunger) as well as their natural desire for self-preservation.
  
• The most important characteristic of the state of nature is that people have complete physical freedom and are at liberty to do essentially as they wish.
• Rousseau alternately emphasizes the benefits and shortfalls of the state of nature, but by and large he reveres it for the physical freedom it grants people, allowing them to be unencumbered by the coercive influence of the state and society. I
• In this regard, Rousseau’s conception of the state of nature is entirely more positive than Hobbes’s conception of the same idea, as Hobbes, who originated the term, viewed the state of nature as essentially a state of war and savagery. This difference in definition indicates the two philosophers’ differing views of human nature, which Rousseau viewed as essentially good and Hobbes as essentially base and brutal.So,I definitely agree with Rousseau's view since its more positive and hopeful.