Are we really so untrustworthy that, left to our own devices, we would attack each other? Can this really be believed? But consider, says Hobbes, how we live even under the authority of the state. What opinion of your neighbours do you express when you lock your doors against them? And of other members of your household when you lock your chests and drawers? If we are so suspicious when we live with the protection of law, just think how afraid we would be in the state of nature, with no law to protect us.

Has Hobbes assumed that we are all grasping egoists with no sense of morality and restraint, and so the only thing that can keep us from attacking each other is a sovereign with draconian powers of punishment? Admittedly some of us are like this, which is why we lock our doors. But most of us can co-operate very well on our own, thank you very much. However Hobbes’s does not rely on such a pessimistic assumption about human nature. Rather he presents our situation as far more tragic than this. In the state of nature many of us will have fellow feeling for others. We do want to respect others and their property. But because we cannot trust everyone, and do not know whom to trust and whom not to trust, we must, if rational, trust no-one. Any other course of action will be far too risky. Our fear of death requires us even to attack other people. Consequently we need a sovereign not so much to threaten us with punishment if we do wrong but to create safe conditions where we can trust each other and safely act as morality requires. Once the sovereign is in place to enforce rules of conduct, acting morally is no longer such a risk. Conditions have been created which allow us to do the right thing without exposing ourselves to exploitation by others.

Hobbes’ arguments have been contested by many. John Locke (1632-1704), for example, worried that an absolute sovereign, with absolute power, would be even more of a danger to us than life in the state of nature. After all, how could we trust the sovereign to act in the citizen’s interests rather than his or her own? So Locke argued that although we do need a sovereign to settle disputes and administer justice, we must also set constitutional limits to the sovereign’s rule. We have a right to rebel if the sovereign abuses our trust.

If we were all completely trustworthy in all our dealings with each other, then perhaps we would not need a government, and could remain forever in the state of nature. But this is asking too much of each other. The authority of the government introduces a framework in which we can deal with this. There is, of course, plenty of room in which we can develop mutual relationships based on trust and understanding in our day-to-day lives. But the full force of the law is there, lurking in the wings, just in case our trust is misplaced or wears too thin.

Further Reading.

Thomas Hobbes’s arguments are presented in his masterpiece Leviathan and John Locke’s in his Second Treatise on Civil Government.
Short extracts from these works are reprinted in Michael Rosen and Jonathan Wolff, ed., Political Thought (OUP 1999).
For further discussion of the idea of the state of nature see Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (OUP 1996).