GGRA03H3 Study Guide - Final Guide: Political Philosophy, Thomas Hobbes, Moral Authority
Document Summary
Names at least two conflict english civil wars. The state of nature is the "war of every man against every man," in which people constantly seek to destroy one another. This state is so horrible that human beings naturally seek peace, and the best way to achieve peace is to construct the leviathan through social contract. The hobbesian state of nature is an instructive fiction, a reasoned deduction of what human nature might have been like in a hypothetical existence prior to any civilization. Yet while hobbes concedes that it never existed in actual history, he asserts that, to a degree, the state of nature is a reality; we see approximations of it in the lives of the. "savage people of america," he says, and europeans approach it in times of civil war. Further evidence of our natural condition can be seen in our mistrust of others, criminal behavior, and in domination of weak countries by strong countries.
