Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Intellectual Context

The introduction summarizes the book’s thesis, spells out its original claims, and defines its organizing concepts. It surveys the broader chronological and intellectual context of the state of nature, including European uses of the term, as well as the stages in the evolution of the distinct American usage and their significance for the American Revolution and early constitutional design. Several early modern and Enlightenment meanings of the term are introduced, ranging from a mythical Golden Age through the pre-political human condition to innocence and damnation. The introduction also describes the book’s method, sources, and defines its chronological and thematic scope.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 330-338
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
American State

The conclusion reviews the book’s claims, methods and sources, and summarizes the book’s conclusions concerning the stages and mechanisms in the evolution of the distinct American state of nature discourse. Placing the American state of nature discourse in its broader intellectual and chronological context, and comparing the state of nature to property and liberty as a fundamental and orientational concept for the colonists, the chapter asserts that without due attention to the state of nature discourse, no history of the American Revolution and early constitutional design can be written.

scholarly journals Odpowiedzialność człowieka za przyrodę w ujęciu Bazylego Wielkiego

Vox Patrum ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 79-104
Author(s):  
Ewa Osek
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Human Condition

According to St. Basil the human condition and the State of nature are always the same. The histories of the mankind and natural world are closely connected, because of his conception of the nature, conceived as the whole of which a man is a part. St. Basil basing himself on the Scriptures divides the word history into three stages: 1) the Paradise age, 2) the times after the Fali, and 3) eschatological timeless future.

Integrating anxiety into international relations theory: Hobbes, existentialism, and ontological security

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bahar Rumelili
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Ontological Security ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Existentialist Philosophy

This article draws on Hobbes and existentialist philosophy to contend that anxiety needs to be integrated into international relations (IR) theory as a constitutive condition, and proposes theoretical avenues for doing so. While IR scholars routinely base their assumptions regarding the centrality of fear and self-help behavior on the Hobbesian state of nature, they overlook the Hobbesian emphasis on anxiety as the human condition that gives rise to the state of nature. The first section of the article turns to existentialist philosophy to explicate anxiety's relation to fear, multiple forms, and link to agency. The second section draws on some recent interpretations to outline the role that anxiety plays in Hobbesian thought. Finally, I argue that an ontological security (OS) perspective that is enriched by insights from existentialism provides the most appropriate theoretical venue for integrating anxiety into IR theory and discuss the contributions of this approach to OS studies and IR theory.

The State of Nature and Commercial Sociability in Early Modern International Legal Thought

Grotiana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Straumann ◽  
Benedict Kingsbury
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
International Legal Order

AbstractAt the same time as the modern idea of the state was taking shape, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Samuel Pufendorf (1632-94) formulated three distinctive foundational approaches to international order and law beyond the state. They differed in their views of obligation in the state of nature (where ex hypothesi there was no state), in the extent to which they regarded these sovereign states as analogous to individuals in the state of nature, and in the effects they attributed to commerce as a driver of sociability and of norm-structured interactions not dependent on an overarching state. Each built on shared Roman and sixteenth-century foundations (section I). Section II argues: 1) that Grotius's natural law was not simply an anti-skeptical construction based on self-preservation (pace Richard Tuck), but continued a Roman legal tradition; 2) that Hobbes's account of natural law beyond the state was essentially prudential, not moral (pace Noel Malcolm); and 3) that commerce as a driver of social and moral order (Istvan Hont's interpretation of Pufendorf and Adam Smith) had a substantial and under-appreciated impact on international legal order. Each contributed to the thought of later writers (section III) such as Emer de Vattel (1714-67), David Hume (1711-76), and Adam Smith (1723-90), and eventually to the empirical legal methodologies of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and Georg Friedrich von Martens (1756-1821).

scholarly journals Rousseau i nowożytne spotkanie z Innym

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 104-112
Author(s):  
Sylwester Zielka
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Primitive People ◽  
Noble Savage

The paper situates the thought of Jean Jacques Rousseau in the context of the 17th and 18th century social and political debate on the possibility of creating a better society, which intensified with the crisis of feudal system and early modern discovery of the Other. The paper also discusses consequences of this debate for shaping anthropology as a field of knowledge and understanding culture of the time. The idea of a “noble savage” according to which non-Europeans, i.e., the “primitive” people living in the state of nature as free and equal, without concerns and inconveniences of civilization, is contrasted with an opposite project of a “degenerate savage” of Thomas Hobbes, who used it as a justification for absolute monarchy in European countries and of European societies over non-Western ones.

Rights and Constitutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 52-106
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Inflection Point ◽  
The State ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Interstate Relations ◽  
European State ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Enslaved African Americans

This chapter examines Otis’s speech in Paxton’s Case to understand why John Adams regarded it as the start of the American Revolution, and describes Otis’s speech as the inflection point when European state of nature theories began to turn into a revolutionary American discourse. In Otis’s system, the state of nature was a source of substantive rights (including life, liberty, and property) that endured in the polity and remained inalienable for both white colonists and enslaved African Americans. Newly discovered archival evidence about this key speech is presented. The chapter follows further strands of state of nature interpretation before the Stamp Act, including Williams’s 1762 election sermon and polemical publications by Otis, which introduced the meaning of the state of nature as interstate relations into the revolutionary discourse. It concludes with Thomas Pownall’s view of citizens of the British Empire sharing the sociability, interdependence, and common rights that characterize the state of nature.

Hobbes

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Obligation ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Relational Concept ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter argues that principal claims of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan are deliverances of a thought experiment in which we imagine away the existence of governmental authority and ask what the human condition would be like without it. It begins by expounding on the state of nature as a relational concept, noting that Hobbes' state of nature is a state of war. It then asks why the state of nature, the state of no governmental authority, is a state of war, and how the fact that the state of nature is a state of war justifies governmental authority. It also considers Hobbes' views on power and discusses three Hobbesian stories about how the state of war is generated based on what Hobbes himself calls “the three principal causes of quarrel”: competition, diffidence, and glory. The chapter concludes by analyzing how Hobbes justifies political obligation.

Early Modern Imperial Governance and the Origins of Canadian Political Culture

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Mancke
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
British North America ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Canadian Political Culture

AbstractFor the last three decades, scholars of Canadian political culture have favoured ideological explanations for state formation with the starting point being the American Revolution and Loyalist resettlement in British North America. This article challenges both the ideological bias and the late eighteenth-century chronology through a reassessment of early modern developments in the British imperial state. It shows that many of the institutional features associated with the state in British North America and later Canada—strong executives and weak assemblies, Crown control of land and natural resources, parliamentary funding of colonial development and accommodation of non-British subjects—were all institutionalized in the imperial state before the American Revolution and before the arrival of significant numbers of ethnically British settlers to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Quebec. Ideological discourses in the British North American colonies that became Canada, unlike those that became the United States, traditionally acknowledged the presence of a strong state in its imperial and colonial manifestations. Rather than challenging its legitimacy, as had Americans, British North Americans, whether liberals, republicans or tories, debated the function of the state and the distribution of power within it.

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