Rawls J. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy

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hobbes ii

Human Nature and the State of Nature

§1. Preliminary Remarks

Hobbes had the general thesis, very important to his view, that a state of

nature tends to pass over very readily into a state of war. He often talks

about a state of nature (which is a state in which there is no effective Sover-

eign to keep men in awe and keep their passions in check) as being essen-

tially a state of war. It is important to note here that for Hobbes, a state of

war consists “not in battle only, or the act of ﬁghting ...butintheknown

disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the con-

trary” (Leviathan, p. 62). What I will call “Hobbes’s Thesis” is the thesis that

a state of nature is, essentially and for all practical purposes, a state of war.

Why does Hobbes think this is so?

Hobbes remarks that it may seem strange to us “that Nature should

thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade, and destroy one another”

(that is, it may seem strange to us that the State of Nature so readily be-

comes a State of War). But, he says that we can understand why this is so

by what he calls an “Inference, made from the Passions” (Leviathan, p. 62).

We can conﬁrm that we make this inference from the passions by looking

at actual experience in everyday life, by noting how we conduct ourselves as

we do now, in civil society, when the Sovereign actually exists and there are

laws and armed public ofﬁcers. He says that when we travel we arm our-

selves, when we go to sleep we lock the door, even in our house we lock up

our chest, and so on (Leviathan, p. 62). By these actions we accuse one an-

other and show that we accept, as it were, this inference from the passions,

which says: If a state of nature obtains, then a state of war also obtains, for all

practical purposes.

Thus what Hobbes says, I think, is that if we take human nature as it is,

we can infer that the State of Nature becomes a State of War. What human

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nature is Hobbes takes to be demonstrated by the essential features and

abilities and desires and other passions of people as we observe them now

in civil society; and so he supposes, for the purposes of his political doc-

trine, that these essential features of human nature are more or less given

or ﬁxed. Hobbes is not denying that social institutions and education and

culture can importantly change our passions and alter our aims, at least in

some very important sorts of cases. But he supposes that, for the purposes

of his political doctrine, that is, of what I call his secular moral system, that

the main outlines and essential features of human nature are more or less

ﬁxed or given. The existence of social institutions and, in particular, of an

effective Sovereign, changes our objective circumstances and hence changes

what it is prudent and rational for us to do. For example, given the Sover-

eign we are now protected and have no reason not to honor our covenants.

That is to say, supposing the Sovereign actually exists, we have reasons we

did not have before to honor our covenants, to keep our promises, and so

on. However, social institutions are not thought of as though they change

the more essential aspects of our nature. They don’t change our most fun-

damental interests in self-preservation, in conjugal affections, and in the

means for commodious living. So, taking those elements as more or less

ﬁxed, for the purpose of his political doctrine, what Hobbes then does is to

infer what a state of nature would be like, taking people as they are, or as

he thinks they are; and he describes a state of nature as a state of “continual

fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,

brutish, and short” (Leviathan, p. 62), but still probably all too long under

those conditions. From what features of (actual) human beings is this infer-

ence from the passions made?

§2. Main Features of Human Nature

I am going to mention and comment on four features of human nature as

he characterizes them and then will go over fairly quickly the basic argu-

ment of what I earlier called “Hobbes’s Thesis.”

The ﬁrst feature is the fact of human equality in natural endowments,

strength of body and quickness of mind. Of course, Hobbes has not re-

garded these natural endowments as literally, or strictly equal; but, his point

is that they are equal enough. Thus, even the weakest in bodily strength is

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still strong enough to kill the strongest, either by secret means or by plot-

ting along with others who are similarly threatened by the strongest. Note

here now that “equal enough” means, not strict equality, but sufﬁciently

equal to support this inference from the passions, where people feel them-

selves threatened, and are led to attack one another. This is sufﬁcient to

give rise to the fears and the dangers of the state of nature. Note also that

Hobbes thinks that in quickness of mind people are even more equally en-

dowed, in many regards, than they are in strength of body. Here the attri-

butes in question are wit and prudence, which Hobbes thinks to be derived

from experience; and here all individuals have, he thinks, equal opportunity

to acquire experience and to learn.

Again, Hobbes doesn’t think that all people have equal quickness of

mind. But the differences arise, on Hobbes’s view, from differences in cus-

tom and education and in bodily constitution, which in turn cause differ-

ences in the passions, that is, in the desire for riches, glory, honor, knowl-

edge, and so on. Hobbes has a tendency in the political doctrine to reduce

all these desires that cause difference of wit to one: namely, the desire for

“power after power,” where power in this case stands for the means for at-

taining our good or the object of our desires (Leviathan, pp. 35, 41). Many

different kinds of things, the things that we think will make us happy, are

forms of power for Hobbes, in the sense that they enable us to attain our

good. It is the different strengths of people’s desires for power that deter-

mine, Hobbes thinks, their quickness of mind. Since these differences are

equal enough, so is their quickness of mind. Here again, equal enough

means equal enough to make the state of nature into a state of war.

A ﬁnal observation concerning equality of endowments is that Hobbes

assumes that if there were, in fact, substantial natural inequality, so that

one person or a few persons could dominate the rest, then that person

would simply rule. He says that they would rule by natural right. Or, if this

seems unrealistic, then a dominant group of persons, provided they could

stay united and be of one mind, could also rule. Hobbes says as much in

discussing the rights whereby God reigns over us. God does not have this

right by virtue of the Right of Creation, which Locke, whom we will be

discussing later, assumes is a moral principle. That is, if God created us, as

Locke believes, then, being created by God, we have a moral obligation to

obey, which obligation depends on the principle that if A creates B then B

has an obligation to A. In Hobbes we don’t ﬁnd such a Right of Creation.

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We don’t ﬁnd an obligation to God based on either God’s creation or our

gratitude, but simply on God’s irresistible power. Hobbes says, “Whereas if

there had been any man of Power Irresistible; there had been no reason,

why he should not by that Power have ruled . . . according to his own dis-

cretion. To those therefore whose Power is irresistible, the dominion of all

men adhereth naturally by their excellence of Power; and consequently it is

from that Power, that the Kingdom over men...belongeth Naturally to

God Almighty; not as Creator, and Gracious; but as Omnipotent” (Levia-

than, p. 187).

Now what Hobbes has to show, then, is that given the state of equality,

among other things, in the state of nature, the tendency is to lead to a state

of war; and to avoid that happening, the great Leviathan with its effective

common power or sovereign is necessary.

The second feature or element of human nature has to do with the

fact that the scarcity of resources and the nature of our needs introduces

competition. We could put it this way: Given the nature of people’s needs

and desires, and given the tendency of needs and desires to change and to

expand (although not necessarily to expand without limit), there is a per-

manent tendency for these needs and desires to require more for their

fulﬁllment than is available in nature. This makes for a scarcity of natural

resources, which is, of course, a relation wherein the amount, or total ag-

gregate of needs and desires is larger than the amount of resources avail-

able. This scarcity, Hobbes believes, leads to competition between people.

If we wait until others have taken all they want, there will be nothing left

for us. So, in a state of nature we must be ready to stake out and to defend

our claims.

Civil society, on Hobbes’s view, does not eliminate this relation of scar-

city. He believes, or at least assumes, that scarcity is a permanent feature of

human life. Scarcity is relative and it may be more or less urgent, so that the

wants and needs that remain unsatisﬁed in civil society are less pressing,

less urgent than those that remain unsatisﬁed in a state of nature. Thus, the

civil state wherein an effective Sovereign exists is more agreeable.

Hobbes says at the end of Chapter XIII that “The Passions that incline

men to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to

commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them” (Levia-

than, p. 63). The existence of an effective Sovereign removes the fear of vio-

lent death; and through the establishment of the conditions wherein indus-

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try is rewarded and is secure, the Sovereign’s existence encourages the

means for a commodious life. On this Hobbes says at the beginning of

Chapter XXX that the end, or purpose, for which the ofﬁce of the Sovereign

is entrusted with sovereign power, is the “procuration of the safety of the

people; to which he [the Sovereign] is obliged by the Law of Nature, and to

render an account thereof to God, the Author of that Law, and to none but

him. But by Safety here, is not meant a bare Preservation, but also all other

Contentments of life, which every man by lawful Industry, without danger,

or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself ” (Leviathan, p. 175).

Therefore, one thing that civil society does, and one thing that makes it

collectively rational, is that it introduces conditions that make it much eas-

ier to produce the fruits of labor, or the means of a commodious living.

This does alter, or render less urgent, the scarcity of natural resources. Scar-

city does still exist. The Sovereign does not eliminate scarcity, but does pro-

duce the objective conditions, on Hobbes’s view, for lawful industry and for

the holding of property and making it secure, and so forth.

The third feature of human nature supporting the inference from the

passions, in Hobbes’s view, is that the psychological makeup of human be-

ings is largely, or predominantly, self-centered. In particular, when people

deliberate about basic political and social matters, they tend to give priority

in their thought and action to their own preservation and security, to that

of their families, and, to use his phrase again, to “the means of a commodi-

ous life.” It can be hard to get this point straight in Hobbes, and it’s worth

spending some time on. Hobbes does not say in the Leviathan that people

are psychological egoists, or that they pursue or care only about their own

good. He does say in Chapter VI that we are capable of benevolence; of de-

sire of good to another, or goodwill; and of charity (Leviathan, p. 26). He

says that we are capable of loving people, and in Chapter XXX, he ranks

conjugal affections as second in importance after our own self-preservation

and before the means of a commodious life (Leviathan, p. 179). He there-

fore does think that people are capable of benevolence and of genuine af-

fection for other people, or concern for their good. He also says that some

persons are virtuous, or that we are capable of virtue—that people do what

is just or noble or honorable because they want to be, and to be recognized

as, someone who acts in that way. An important example of this is in Chap-

ter XV, where Hobbes writes about the virtue of justice and of acting in ac-

cordance with it. He equates justice with keeping our promises, honoring

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our covenants, and he says, “That which gives to human Actions the relish

of Justice, is a certain Nobleness or Gallantness of courage, (rarely found,)

by which a man scorns to be beholding for the contentment of his life, to

fraud, or breach of promise” (Leviathan, p. 74).

That is an important statement. There are several others in the Levia-

than, where Hobbes clearly asserts that we have the capacity to act justly

for its own sake. He does not, then, deny that capacity, nor does he deny

that we have capacities of benevolence or affection. Often, however, he ap-

pears to do so. One might say, perhaps, that his views are inconsistent when

strictly read. But, I think that it is better to say that he is emphasizing cer-

tain aspects of human nature in ways that are suitable for his purposes, that

is, for his political doctrine. He wants to give an account of what holds civil

society together and to explain why an effective Sovereign is necessary for

peace and concord. He is concerned, that is, primarily with politics, with

political questions, and with basic sorts of institutional structures of gov-

ernment.

Politics is, of course, only part of human conduct; and Hobbes need

not deny that we can be, and often are, benevolent, and that we are capable

of the virtues of justice and ﬁdelity, and so forth. His point is that one

should not rely on these human capacities in an account of civil society and

in the basis of social unity. That is, there are other fundamental interests

upon which one ought, if one can, to base the unity of civil society. His

view would then be that political institutions must be rooted in, and conge-

nial to certain fundamental interests: our interest ﬁrst in preserving our life,

then our interest in securing the good of those who are close to us (what

Hobbes calls “conjugal affection”), and ﬁnally, our interest in acquiring the

means of a commodious life (Leviathan, p. 179). He lists these three things I

am calling “fundamental interests” in that order of importance. It is those

three fundamental interests to which he appeals. To say that we give great

weight to these interests in political matters, and that the account of civil

society should focus on these interests, is not to deny that we are capable of

other desires and often act on them in other circumstances. Perhaps, in

those other circumstances they may be extremely strong.

Thus, I am assuming that Hobbes’s largely self-centered, or self-focused,

account of human nature serves, in effect, as an emphasis for the purposes

of a political conception. It is an emphasis that goes with his stress on the

desire for power, where a person’s power is deﬁned as a person’s present

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means to obtain some future apparent good (Leviathan, p. 41). These means

include all sorts of things. They include natural faculties of body or mind,

or things that are acquired by those faculties. The latter include riches, rep-

utations; they even include “Friends, and the secret working of God, which

men call Good Luck” (Leviathan, p. 41). It is small wonder then, with this

broad deﬁnition of “power,” that we should desire to have it.

The weight that Hobbes assigns to our self-preservation in his political

theory is used by him to explain why certain rights, in his sense, are inalien-

able. He says that no one can be understood deliberately and intentionally

to do anything contrary to their self-preservation. Contracts (the transfer-

ring or renouncing of rights in consideration of some other right or good)

are deliberate, voluntary acts, and as such, Hobbes says, they must have as

their object, some good to the agent. He then continues, “Therefore there

be some Rights, which no man can be understood by any words, or other

signs, to have abandoned, or transferred.” He gives as an example, the right

of resisting those who actually assault us. And he says, “And lastly the mo-

tive, and end for which this renouncing, and transferring of Right is intro-

duced, is nothing else but the security of a man’s person, in his life, and in

the means of so preserving life, as not to be weary of it. And therefore if a

man by words, or other signs, seem(s) to despoil himself of the End, for

which those signs were intended; he is not to be understood as if he meant

it, or that it was his will; but that he was ignorant of how such words and

actions were to be interpreted” (Leviathan, p. 66).

Here, Hobbes is more or less regarding it as a principle of legal inter-

pretation within his political doctrine that persons must be presumed to in-

tend their own good and so to preserve their own lives. However, at least

from things he says elsewhere, he knows perfectly well that people some-

times do irrational things; and he believes that some persons, with full

knowledge, prefer death rather than disgrace or dishonor. He says that

most men would rather lose their lives than suffer slander; and that a son

would rather die than obey an order to kill his father, on the grounds that if

he were to do obey such an order, he would look infamous and would be

hated by all the world; and that, from shame or dishonor, he cannot bear

(this is in the earlier work, De Cive).

Perhaps what Hobbes is saying is that the desire for self-preservation is

the strongest of all natural desires, but that while this will explain the pri-

macy that he gives to it in his political theory, this doesn’t imply that it is al-

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ways the strongest of all desires, when everything is taken into account. In

other words, I am making a contrast between saying something is the

strongest of natural desires and saying something is the strongest of all of

our desires; everything considered. Thus, he says in De Cive, an earlier work,

that we seek to avoid death by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than

whereby a stone moves downwards. But, as we all know, stones sometimes

move sideways, or they get thrown upward. Social institutions and social

customs and education and culture can, as it were, work on us in a certain

way, so that as civilized persons we act non-naturally or contrary to nature,

if you like, affected by institutions and culture as much as by the word of

reason.

Hobbes seems to allow this, and he says as much in various places.

However, in his political conception he wants to emphasize very basic

things. He is aware that he lives in an age in which people appeal to many

different kinds of interests—to religious interests, to political interests, to

interests that he thinks are based in the end on pride and vainglory and love

of dominion—and he is trying to introduce a class of interests common to

everyone. That is, although we may differ from the standpoint of our reli-

gious and political views, and may have other various interests that are

very important to us, we nevertheless share certain fundamental interests

in self-preservation, conjugal affection, and the means of a commodious

life. Hobbes wants to put all other interests aside and see the kind of argu-

ment that we would get for an effective Sovereign based only on these inter-

ests. The point is that Hobbes is not saying that other important inter-

ests, religious interests for example, don’t exist or are not important to

people. He knows perfectly well that they exist and are important. He sees

them all around him. But he is trying to give a basis upon which people

might agree that an effective Sovereign is over all, over everything else, a de-

sirable thing to have—thinking of the social contract in the third sense I dis-

cussed earlier (as an argument why people should accept an existing Sover-

eign to avoid degeneration back into the state of nature were the Sovereign

to lose his power).

§3. The Argument for Hobbes’s Thesis

I shall now pull all this together and give, in a more concise form, Hobbes’s

argument for his thesis that the state of nature leads to, and in fact is, a

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state of war. First, however, remember that in the state of nature there is

no effective Sovereign to keep men in awe and discipline their passions, and

that a state of war is a condition in which the will to contend by battle is

publicly recognized. Furthermore, as I quoted Hobbes earlier, a state of

war consists “not in battle only or the act of ﬁghting ...butinaknowndis-

position thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.

All other time is Peace” (Leviathan, p. 62). I take “publicly recognized” to

mean that everybody knows, and everybody knows everybody else knows,

that this is a state of war; it is common knowledge.

The argument for Hobbes’s Thesis can be summarized as follows:

(a) Equality of natural endowments and mental powers leads to equal-

ity of hope in attaining our ends, given the central place in Hobbes’s politi-

cal doctrine of the desire for self-preservation and for the means of a com-

modious life. Equality of hope, given the scarcity of natural and produced

means of sustaining life, puts people in competition with one another, and

makes them potential enemies.

(b) Competition, given the great uncertainty concerning the aims of

others and the possibility of their forming alliances and coalitions against

us, gives rise to “difﬁdence,” which in modern usage means a general state

of mutual distrust.

by pride and vainglory to gain dominion over others, together with the fact

that no covenants or contracts can provide security in the absence of a Sov-

ereign to enforce them, makes productive industry seem less worthwhile

and predation seem more productive, and this leads people to believe that

their security is best secured by anticipatory attack.

(d) Anticipation—as the state of affairs in which the disposition to strike

ﬁrst when the circumstances seem propitious—is generally and publicly

known, and is, by deﬁnition, a state of war.

Now I’ll comment on this outline of Hobbes’s argument:

(i) Note the meaning of difﬁdence. Nowadays it means shyness, timidity,

or lack of self-conﬁdence. But the derivation from the Latin is: difﬁdere,

which means to mistrust. This is what it means in Hobbes. (Compare

Hobbes’s use of “mediocrity of the passions” (Leviathan, p. 80) in the next

to last paragraph of Chapter 15, meaning moderation of the passions.)

(ii) Note carefully that as I have stated the argument for Hobbes’s thesis,

it assumes that everyone in the State of Nature conducts themselves in a per-

fectly rational manner. (I shall discuss this in more detail in a moment.) No

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one is assumed actually to be moved by the love of dominion, or to have

their deliberations actually distorted by pride and vainglory. No one is as-

sumed to act irrationally in this argument. Indeed, given the opportunity,

anticipatory attack is one’s most rational response to the circumstances.

Nor does the argument assume that people have boundless desires for ever

greater means to a commodious life. All that is assumed is that they desire

to have enough to secure their present and future needs and wants.

At step (d) it is assumed that it is possible that some people are moved

by pride and vainglory to seek dominion over others, and that this possibil-

ity must be taken into account in one’s deliberations. It may be that no one

is actually so moved; what is important is that many believe that some are.

If we cannot exclude the possibility, we have to take it into account and

guard against it. The possibility is a basis for mutual suspicion. For example,

in the case of two national powers in competition, they naturally tend to

distrust each other. It may be that neither power is motivated to dominion

or has any of these sorts of passions inﬂuencing those who govern it. But

still the other side thinks so, and that is enough to exacerbate the state of

nature and transform it into a state of war. That is the way I would inter-

pret Hobbes’s emphasis on pride and vainglory. He does not for his pur-

poses need to base his political theory on it, as some interpreters might

think. We can say that if pride and vainglory, and the will to dominion is a

possibility, then that is enough for his purposes. Thus, the difﬁculty in the

State of Nature is the great uncertainty about the aims and intentions of

others. As long, then, as love of dominion and vainglory are psychologically

possible, these passions are a complicating factor in the State of Nature. A

general state of uncertainty about others’ aims and intentions characterizes

the State of Nature, so that a concern for our self-preservation forces us to

consider the worst possibilities.

(iii) Hobbes also does not need to assume that people generally desire

more “power” (as means for their good = means to fulﬁll their desires)

without bound. Most people may be content with moderate means (for a

commodious life). So long as some do strive for dominion, all must strive for

dominion as means to their own security. Gibbon said: “Rome conquered

the ancient world in self-defense.” (He meant this in sarcasm.)

(iv) The signiﬁcance of Hobbes’s argument lies in part in the fact that it

rests on quite plausible assumptions about the normal conditions of human

life. For example, again it does not assume that everyone is actually moved

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