Hobbes and the state of nature
The ‘state of nature’ was a common thought experiment among political theorists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It supposed a time before humans were organized into civil society, and this absence of government authority has sometimes been seen as analogous to anarchy in international relations – a state of war if not a condition of actual fighting. Under such conditions, as explained earlier, ‘self-help’ has been considered a necessity: there is nobody else on whom to rely in the struggle for power and security.
The standard reference is Leviathan (1651), written by Thomas Hobbes at the time of the English Civil War. In a key passage he said:
‘Hereby it is manifest that, during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man. For WAR consisteth not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time wherein the will to contend by battle is sufficiently known; and therefore the notion of time is to be considered in the nature of war as it is in the nature of foul weather. For as the nature of foul weather lies not in a shower or two of rain but in an inclination thereto of many days together, so the nature of war consisteth not in actual fighting but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.’