Odi et Amo? Hobbes on the State of Nature

2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrés Rosler
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual State ◽  
Initial State ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
The Individual ◽  
States Of Nature

AbstractVery few—if any—will doubt Hobbes's aversion to the state of nature and sympathy for civil society. On the other hand, it is not quite news that it would be inaccurate to claim that Hobbes rejected the state of nature entirely. Indeed, he embraced or at the very least tolerated the state of nature at the international level in order to escape from the individual state of nature. Hobbes's recommended exchange of an individual state of nature for an international one does seem to have a smack of contradiction, arguably first noted by Rousseau. There is yet another charge of contradiction lurking around Hobbes's account of the state of nature. Hobbes's political thought would still reflect an ambivalent attitude towards a third instantiation of the state of nature, i.e. civil war. This is one of the main reasons why the political allegiance of Thomas Hobbes has been an issue ever since the publication of De Cive at the very least. This paper deals with Hobbes's differential treatment of the original and the international states of nature and discusses the source of Hobbes's somewhat ambivalent attitude towards civil war. It is here argued that Hobbes can fairly hold his ground vis-à-vis Rousseau's criticism, in spite of the normative resemblance between the international state of nature and the initial state of nature, and that Hobbes ambivalent attitude of attraction and repulsion towards civil war is actually due not so much to opportunism on his part as to the normative autonomy he has granted to the state of nature.

On the threshold of the state

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Theoretical Level ◽  
The City

This introductory chapter provides a background of the conflicted relationship between nature and the city—the fraught intersection of the political and the natural world—in the natural law discourse of the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the course of this extraordinary century, marked by the outward expansion of European states across the globe and simultaneously by their internal implosion into civil war, the boundaries of political space were fundamentally contested not only at a practical but at a theoretical level, and the dominant idiom of that contestation was the universalizing juridical language of natural law. What was forged in the process, culminating iconically in the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and Thomas Hobbes' masterpiece Leviathan of 1651, is commonly taken to have been nothing other than the modern, territorial nation-state.

Prerogative and the Rule of Law in John Locke and the Lincoln Presidency

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Mattie
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
John Locke ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Of Nature

Locke's Second Treatise of Government argues for the rule of law as just and rightful politics, not only in the fundamental legislation that is the constitution but also in regular governance by the legislature. Locke also argues for executive prerogative, the power of doing good without or even against law during contingency and necessity. Rule by legislation and rule by prerogative each preserve the political community and reflect its foundation out of the state of nature. But they do not easily coexist in the constitution, which provides no means to judge the rightful use of prerogative. President Lincoln's strong, discretionary actions during the crisis of the Civil War illustrate Locke's argument about prerogative's fundamental importance and its problematic relation to ordinary lawfulness. However, as Lincoln recognized, both the Constitution and Congress formally provided for an executive power that was remarkably compatible with the rule of law—and that thereby responded to the Lockean problem.

States of Nature in Immanuel Kant’sDoctrine of Right

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 727-739
Author(s):  
Alan J. Kellner
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
Indigenous Politics ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Global Vision ◽  
States Of Nature

From an analysis of Kant’s states of nature in each division of the Doctrine of Right—the state of nature in general and the international state of nature—this paper reinterprets Cosmopolitan Right and the duty to exit the state of nature as more colonial than previously recognized. Kant places “savages” in the state of nature, depicting them and their lawless condition as bellicose. As such, states may force them to exit the state of nature; those who encounter hostile peoples on foreign lands may be justified in aggressing. Having shown that colonial features of the Doctrine of Right cannot be wrested from the text, this paper unsettles the interpretive dominance of the established view that Kant is staunchly anti-colonial. Nevertheless, anti-colonial features of the text remain. The paper shows that interpreters must accept that Kant’s text is both colonial and anti-colonial. Kant’s global vision remained too statist to appropriately include indigenous politics. The paper closes by briefly indicating a path for future research whereby contemporary Kantian cosmopolitan projects become more attuned to—and modified in light of—the political agency and particular struggles of indigenous peoples.

scholarly journals Hobbes in the Anthropocene: Reconsidering the State of Nature in Its Relevance for Governing

2021 ◽  
pp. 030437542110086
Author(s):  
Maximilian Lakitsch
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Accountability ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Political Modernity

The theoretical work of Thomas Hobbes marks the dawn of political modernity and thus also the beginning of modern reasoning about governing. In his Leviathan, Hobbes creates the modern space of the political through the exclusion of the world’s social and natural abundance. This crossroads of political thinking might not least be of relevance for the Anthropocene. After all, affirming the Anthropocene returns mankind to a cosmos of infinite human–nature interrelationships, which strongly resembles Hobbes’s conceptual depiction of the premodern state of nature and its incomprehensible, contingent, and precarious world, a world that Hobbes had intended to ban for good. In this context, this article reconsiders the state of nature’s internal dynamics in its relevance for governing in the Anthropocene—at the expense of the normative claims of modernist governing. After all, embracing the complex ontologies of the Anthropocene and the state of nature disperses agency among the human and nonhuman world, which questions the idea of ethical and political accountability. Without such a reference, governing runs the risk of becoming arbitrary and thereby another shallow projection of modernist conceptions. This article develops an interpretation of political subjectivity as a reference for governing, deriving from the materialistic world of the Hobbesian state of nature. On this foundation, the article elaborates on how this reading of subjectivity reconfigures the conception of political space and how this shift affects the scope of governing.

scholarly journals THE CONCEPT OF THE POLITICAL IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS HOBBES

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-396
Author(s):  
Bachuki Tsanava ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Rational Deliberation ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Right

The article is devoted to the concept of the political in the philosophy of English thinker Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). The author points out the key concepts for understanding the concept of the political in Hobbes’s philosophy, such as the method of his philosophy, anthropological views, and the idea of the state of nature. The author describes the philosopher’s thought path toward the concept of the political, beginning from his attempt to overcome the shortcomings of contemporary philosophy and the desire to create a science of politics, based on rational deliberation. Hobbes contrasts elocution with his method of searching for political truth based on reason because there is more harm than good done to the state by elocution. In the hands of selfish and vain individuals, elocution turns into an instrument for achieving personal goals rather than the common good. Hobbes’s anthropological views allow him to describe all the horror and injustice in the state of nature, in which any selfish, but reasonable person, using the right method will come to the idea of the need to establish a state. The author notes that the concepts of vanity and fear occupied a particularly important place in Hobbes’s philosophy, since they are the reasons for the collapse and creation of states. Thus, the concept of the political in Hobbes’s philosophy is inseparable from deliberation based on reason, since without it selfish individuals cannot hear the voice of reason, establish the Leviathan, and proceed to the political condition. The social con- tract, obtained as a result of rational deliberation of egoistic individuals, represents the pinnacle of the political because neither the political condition nor citizens existed before it.

Pierre Charron: Precursor to Hobbes

1963 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Grendler
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The State ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past

The political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is rightly considered as marking the end of one era in political theory and the beginning of a new one. Formerly, men had sought and found a guide to political conduct in a basic principle upon which the order of well-being of the state depended. Hobbes broke with the past by postulating the state as simply a rationalization of the needs of men. He analyzed man's psychology and relied on his own observation and ratiocination to establish the best possible state commensurate with mankind's situation, but his supreme emphasis on force and authority left no room for the older constitutional, religious, and traditional safeguards of the citizen. This was the price that Hobbes willingly paid to achieve a secure state during the English Civil War.

scholarly journals Wojna i władza w filozofii politycznej Hobbesa

Etyka ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 137-157
Author(s):  
Sebastian Michalik
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

The subject of this article are two fundamental concepts of Hobbes’ political philosophy: “war of all against all” and political power. The analysis of anthropological basis of Hobbes’ political theory is of crucial importance for these considerations. It shows that the state of nature and the political state create dialectical relationship, not an insurmountable opposition. The further exploration leads to the conclusion that the sovereign power is identical with the rights and brutal actions of the individual living in the state of nature. In other words, political state is merely a continuation of conflicts taking place in the “war of all against all”. In order to conceal this fact Hobbes provides the sovereign power with the ideological effect of objectivity. The power based in sheer violence is masked as Leviathan who exists in the minds of its subject, creating an illusion of a cohesive social order devoid of any antagonisms and, therefore, objective.

scholarly journals Potência de ação e ordem: o poder e a razão segundo Nicolau Maquiavel e Thomas Hobbes

2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Kersting
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Second Moment ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
First Moment ◽  
The Relationship

O autor apresenta aborda, primeiramente, a relação entre poder e razão no pensamento político de Maquiavel. Num segundo momento, apresenta, no pensamento de Hobbes, a trajetória que se estende da razão impotente do estado de natureza até à razão poderosa do Estado, dispensador de segurança. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Maquiavel. Hobbes. Poder. Razão. ABSTRACT The author analyses in a first moment the relationship between power and reason in the political thought of Machiavelli. In a second moment, he exposes, according to Hobbes’s political philosophy, the path to be gone through from the powerless reason of the state of nature towards the powerful reason of the State, which grants security. KEY WORDS – Machiavelli. Hobbes. Power. Reason.

The Concept of the Political

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Schupmann
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 2 reinterprets Schmitt’s concept of the political. Schmitt argued that Weimar developments, especially the rise of mass movements politically opposed to the state and constitution, demonstrated that the state did not have any sort of monopoly over the political, contradicting the arguments made by predominant Weimar state theorists, such as Jellinek and Meinecke. Not only was the political independent of the state, Schmitt argued, but it could even be turned against it. Schmitt believed that his contemporaries’ failure to recognize the nature of the political prevented them from adequately responding to the politicization of society, inadvertently risking civil war. This chapter reanalyzes Schmitt’s political from this perspective. Without ignoring enmity, it argues that Schmitt also defines the political in terms of friendship and, importantly, “status par excellence” (the status that relativizes other statuses). It also examines the relationship between the political and Schmitt’s concept of representation.

Cicero and Milo

1974 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 62-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Lintott
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Realignment ◽  
Political Scene

The battle of Bovillae on 18th January, 52 B.C., which led to Clodius' death, was literally treated by Cicero in a letter to Atticus as the beginning of a new era—he dated the letter by it, although over a year had elapsed. It is difficult to exaggerate the relief it afforded him from fear and humiliation for a few precious years before civil war put him once more in jeopardy. At one stroke Cicero lost his chief inimicus and the Republic lost a hostis and pestis. Moreover, the turmoil led to a political realignment for which Cicero had been striving for the last ten years—a reconciliation between the boni and Pompey, as a result of which Pompey was commissioned to put the state to rights. Cicero's behaviour in this context, especially his return to the centre of the political scene, is, one would have thought, of capital importance to the biographer of Cicero. Yet two recent English biographies have but briefly touched on the topic. It is true that, in the background of Cicero's personal drama, Caesar and Pompey were taking up positions which, as events turned out, would lead to the collapse of the Republic. However, Cicero and Milo were not to know this, nor were their opponents; friendly cooperation between the two super-politicians apparently was continuing. Politicians on all sides were still aiming to secure power and honour through the traditional Republican magistracies, and in this pursuit were prepared to use the odd mixture of violence, bribery and insistence on the strict letter of the constitution, which was becoming a popular recipe. In retrospect their obsession with the customary organs of power has a certain irony. Yet it is a testimony to the political atmosphere then. Their manoeuvres are also important because both the instability caused by the violence of Clodius and Milo, and the eventual confidence in the rule of law established under Pompey's protection, helped to determine the political position of the boni associated with Pompey in 49 B.C. Cicero's relationship with Milo is at first sight one of the more puzzling aspects of his career. What had they in common, except that Milo, like most late Republican politicians, was at one time associated with Pompey? Properly interpreted, however, this relationship may not only illuminate Cicero's own attitudes but illustrate the character of the last years of Republican politics.

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