Value profile: justice  (Page 2/8)

Hobbes sees the social contract as a procedure that takes us from a State of Nature (which is identical to a State of War) to Civil Society. Each contract has a quid pro quo , a mutually beneficial exchange. Individuals agree to lay down their natural liberties because these, combined with the acquisitiveness of human nature, have led to a state of war of all against all. To enforce this contract, each individual transfers his or her natural rights and powers to a sovereign who is charged with enforcing the contract they have made with one another.

This reduces to a formula: Rational Self-Interest + Knowledge of Human Nature + Natural Equality between all human individuals = a State of War. Why? Because human individuals are characterized individually by unlimited desire; without some check unlimited individual desire leads to conflicts between different individuals who desire the same thing.

The state of war is for Hobbes is highly undesirable. Life in the State of Nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

"Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man against every man....Whatsoever there is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, that what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” T. Hobbes. (1651). Leviathan: Edited with an Introduction by C. B. MacPherson Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, p. 186.

Key Terms

Rational Self-Interest : For Hobbes, humans want to stay alive. Rational self-interest dictates that the individual will do whatever is necessary to ensure continued survival.

State of Nature : The absence of laws, social norms, and customs. Each has the liberty to do what he or she wants. Nothing but the opposition of other human individuals stands in the way of an individual fulfilling desire. Hobbes, viewing human nature through the lens of physics and the natural sciences, characterizes state of nature as a social and political vacuum where one pursues whatever one desires. Because desires do not limit themselves, unless they are unlimited from the outside, they lead individuals to come into conflict with one another. The State of Nature is nothing other than a State of War of all against all.

Human Nature : Hobbes' conception of human nature has been termed "possessive individualism" by C. B. Macpherson.