‘State of nature’ signifies a condition of human existence from which man seeks to emerge either due to an anarchic condition or an absence of authority or regulation on the activities of individuals or lack of condition of self-expression. In short, it is a stateless condition without a superior authority (either a Leviathan or a Commonwealth or General Will) to regulate and provide the condition of life (Hobbes’s self-preservation), natural rights (Locke’s life, liberty and property) and liberty (Rousseau’s civil liberty). Since this condition of human existence is inadequate, unsatisfactory and undesirable, it requires escape to a better condition and hence, a social contract to set this up.
Hobbes deplores life in the state of nature as ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. This condition is attributable to what Hobbes identifies in human nature as competitive, selfish, seeking power continually, diffidence, vainglory and egoist. Due to this, no one is sure of the fruit of their labour and industry. And to keep what one has in possession, he has to secure more power, a continued search for power. In the state of nature, each individual lives in fear of the other. Each one is being more or less equal in power to the other; strength of one offset by ingenuity of the other. This makes them diffident. In the state of nature, there are limited rights available to man and that to what one can secure through physical power. In fact, there being no principle of right or wrong, justice or injustice, honesty or deceit, the cardinal rule in the state of nature is ‘he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can’.31 This anarchic situation is a product of what Hobbes identifies as instinct of self-preservation in the state of nature. To this extent, right to life is an important element but this ‘modest need for security’ becomes equivalent to an endless need for power—’war of every man against everyman’.
Now, if this is the Hobbes’s pre-social and pre-civil state of nature, is it worth staying on in such a situation? If not, then what can make men get out of this situation? Man has ‘desire’ which makes him seek what others also want, leading to a war-like situation. However, along with desire, Hobbes adds another principle of human nature—reason. But what role does reason play? Reason adds foresight and regulative power in human nature, which help men realize the importance of effective self-preservation. For Hobbes, reason only can guide men away from a ‘hasty acquisitiveness’ (search for power which prevails in the state of nature) to a more ‘calculating selfishness’ (regulated and adjusted self-interest which is found in society).32 The desire for effective security and self-preservation has to reject the state of nature and be more regulated. This could be possible only when men recognize, through foresight, the value of certain laws. These certain laws which reason teaches men to obey are ‘Natural Laws’. Hobbes’s Natural Laws are merely ‘counsels of prudence’ and not embodiment of morality or justice.33 These are counsels of prudence because they teach men not to endanger the security of others, as one reasonable being would not expect the same for oneself. In Hobbes’s words, law of nature ‘is the dictate of right reason … is a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life … ,’34 In short, in consonance with the basic principle of self-preservation and security, reason guides men to follow natural laws. This in turn, teaches that peace and cooperation is desirable for more effective self-preservation and security.
Hobbes identifies nineteen Natural Laws or Articles of Peace that ‘concern the doctrine of civil society’.35 The most important of them, which will help men come out of the state of nature are: (i) every man should seek peace, (ii) surrender equal rights to possess all things and be contented with as much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself, (iii) peace requires mutual confidence and trust and each should keep the covenants/engagements that they make to do this. This for Hobbes becomes the basis for social contract for constituting civil society and instituting the sovereign.
Locke’s understanding of human nature as peaceful, altruistic and sociable shapes his views on conditions that prevail in the state of nature. Locke’s picture of the state of nature accordingly contrasts with the one painted by Hobbes. Instead of being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ as Hobbes says, for Locke, the state of nature is ‘a State of Peace, Good Will, Mutual Assistance and Preservation’. Locke’s state of nature is not pre-social; it is only pre-political, as there is absence of regulating authority and not freedom or equality. Locke’s state of nature is a condition of ‘perfect freedom as well as of perfect equality …’36 Men are equal and free to act as they think fit but within the bounds of the law of nature. Thus, equality and liberty to act does not mean it is a state of licence. The presence of the law of nature provides both rights and duties. Locke’s state of nature is neither licentious nor lawless, as Locke says:
State of nature is a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of Licence … Because … The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and Reason, which is that Law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.37
This way, Locke provides two aspects of the state of nature—natural rights and acknowledged duties. Natural Law provides certain inalienable or inviolable natural rights—rights to life (life and health), liberty and property (possessions/estate). Right to life is right to self-preserve and secure one’s existence, which is the only right Hobbes feels worth providing. However, Locke adds right to liberty, as right to do whatever one wants as far as it is not incompatible with the Law of Nature. Locke also adds right to estate or property or possession as ‘right to anything with which he has mixed labour, provided he makes good use of it, “since nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy”’.38 At the same time, Natural Law also enjoins certain acknowledged duties in the form of obligation not to hurt other’s life, health, liberty and possessions (or life, liberty and estate). For Locke, man, being a rational creature, is capable of discovering moral truths and recognizing the law of nature. These duties command him to do what he can to preserve others when his own preservation is not at stake; he should keep his promises as keeping promises belong to men as men.
Now, if for Locke, state of nature has inalienable rights and acknowledged duties and is social, moral and peaceful in character, then why men should seek to get out of it and engage in social contract. The identification of reasons for this leads Locke to define the terms of the social contract and character of the political set-up where inalienable natural rights are carried over to lay the foundation of a liberal social and political order. Though for Locke, the state of nature is not a state of war, as Wayper says, ‘it is unfortunately a state in which peace is not secure’. This insecurity of peace arises from ‘corruption and viciousness of degenerated men. Though majority tends to follow the law of nature, a few men may act in self-interest. There being no regulating authority, each one tends it to interpret in his own favour. For Locke, despite all its equality and liberty, state of nature still leaves three important wants unsatisfied—‘the want of an “established, settled, known law”, the want of a “known and indifferent judge”, the want of an executive power to enforce just decisions’.39 In short, state of nature does not have a legislative authority, an executive authority and a judicial authority—the three organs that we identify as organs of a government. It is the requirement of a legislator, an executive and an arbitrator to make enjoyment of right to life, liberty and property meaningful that social contract comes into being.
Rousseau’s state of nature has to reflect the quality man possesses as man. In his Discourses on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality, he treats man as ‘noble savage’, who along with self-interest also possesses a feeling of sympathy for others. The feeling of sympathy reflects ‘innate revulsion against suffering in others’, what is called pity. According to Rousseau, the ‘noble savage … tempers the ardor he has for his own well-being by an innate repugnance to see his fellow man suffer.’40 This belief of Rousseau in the innate goodness of man to have pity due to which man feels and shares the suffering of others, leads him to conclude that the state of nature is a state of peace. It is a state of idyllic happiness, romantic freedom and primitive simplicity.
However, this peaceful and romantic state is disturbed due to emergence of property, institutions and regulations and with it the concept of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, leading to inequality. This might have destroyed natural liberty and put external law of inequality and property leading to a need for a civil society.
In The Social Contract, however, Rousseau takes a somewhat different view of the state of nature. Though this does not radically alter his understanding of man, however, it presents a different view. As per this formulation, in the state of nature, an individual enjoys natural liberty and is free to act. But this liberty is driven by instinct and self-love. Physical impulsion and appetite is the basis of action. Appetite driven liberty is what Rousseau calls ‘slavery’ to selfish desire. His remark that ‘obedience to the mere impulse of appetite is slavery’ exemplifies this aspect. In the state of nature what man has is actual will—an impulsive and unreflective will, which is based on self-interest and not well-being of the community. Real will, as consciousness of common good, though present is not fully realized. It is this search to locate liberty as an integral part of the community, which expresses itself in the form of General Will that leads Rousseau to find the reason for the social contract. Rousseau presents an ‘organic view’ of liberty, which is not licentious and unlike in the state of nature where actual will is dominant, liberty in civil society presents real liberty as it is a product of the General Will. By formulating that real liberty lies in following the law of the General Will and enjoying civil liberty, Rousseau put the state of nature as an undesirable state of affairs. Thus, a transition from state of ‘actual will’ to a state of ‘general will’ is necessitated for enjoying civil liberty.
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