Talk:State of nature

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This page is crap. Hobbes was not a Christian; he was consciously fighting Christianity. Read the newly updated Thomas Hobbes page for more info on why.

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I removed the warning about the page being based on Larry's text. It doesn't seem to have any of the original text left in it. -- Tim Starling 09:17, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Marx a Romantic thinker? 2 Locke/Anon 3 History of SON 4 Rawls

[edit] Marx a Romantic thinker?

Surely this is a stretch of (the faculty of) the Imagination.

Hobbes's premise has plenty of critics, not all of whom would generally be considered Romantics. Will an anthropologist contribute to this otherwise uninteresting article?

[edit] Locke/Anon

An anon added some stuff I trimmed to:

John Locke further explores the state of nature in his Second Treatise on Civil Government writen in the wake of England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. Locke argued that unlimited government leads to abuses and that government should be from the people and that it should be limited so as not to violate the natural rights of people. Locke states that the entire population has the right to punish an offender so that he will not commit the crime again and so that others will be deterred from moral law breaking.

I'm not familiar with Locke, but this para doesn't appear to have a lot to do with state of nature. William M. Connolley 08:40:09, 2005-08-24 (UTC).

[edit] History of SON

Article states the SON was first proposed by Hobbes, but there are clear historical antecedents in Aquinas... anyone know enough about Aquinas to fix this error?

[edit] Rawls

I don't see anything in what is written here about Rawls that wasn't said earlier by Hobbes. If Rawls has anything new to say, it should be made rather clearer! William M. Connolley 23:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC).

I don't understand... could you elaborate? Rawls's use of the SON is completely different from Hobbes's and the article seems to make that clear. Mikker ^... 16:10, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the differences:

• People in the original position have no society and are under a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing how they may benefit from society. - just like Hobbes
• They do not know if they will be smart or dumb, rich or poor, or anything else about their fortunes and abilities - hard to interpret: but if interpreted as "they do not know what they specifically will gain", is just like Hobbes
• Rawls reasons that people in the original position would want a society where they had their basic liberties protected and where they had some economic guarantees as well. - Hobbes, though with the word "economic" added

And so on. Where is the novelty? Presumably there is some somewhere, but this article doesn't explain it. William M. Connolley 19:48, 16 February 2006 (UTC).

Yeah, there better be novelty! Rawls isn't the most influencial political philosopher in the 20th century for nothing! As to your examples:

• The "veil of ignorance" is a device unique to Rawls - Hobbes has nothing similar. Rawls argues that to ensure fairness and equality in the original position the parties must be placed behind said "veil of ignorance" which screens out all particular information about their own position, and particular information about their society (1971: 136-142). This is done to "nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage" (ibid.: 136). The intuition that animates this view is that no one deserves either to be favoured or disadvantaged as a result of their place in the distribution of primary goods. As Rawls puts it: “no one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favourable starting place in society” (ibid.: 102). To factor out arbitrary influences, the veil of ignorance excludes particular facts about the parties themselves such as their sex, race, religion, wealth, conception of the good, social status, aversion to risk, and special features of their psychology (ibid.: 136-137). Additionally, particular facts about the society the parties in the original position will inhabit is also excluded, specifically, its economic and political situation, level of culture and civilisation, and distribution of income (ibid.: 137).
• This is just the (inelagantly phrased) explanation of the above.
• I don't think Hobbes says anywhere people's 'basic liberties' are to be respected - he is far more concerned with people's basic security. Rawls simply assumes the state already exists but the "basic structure" (roughly, the constitution and economic system) is yet to be decided. I.e. Hobbes + Rawls have completely different topics in mind in their respective writings... Mikker ^... 20:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that makes things clearer. So Rawls is proposing something definitely non-realistic: obviously, people do know their sex at the very least. Whereas Hobbes isn't really definite as to whether his is a thought experiment, or how things actually might have happened. William M. Connolley 20:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC).

Exactly. Rawls says explicitly the original position is a "hypothetical expository device" designed to encapsulate our considered judgments concerning the reasonable conditions to impose on the parties who decide the basic structure of society. Hobbes in contrast has a positive conception in mind; whether or not the state of nature as described ever existed, he thinks a war of all against all will erupt if the conditions of the SON were ever to obtain, whilst Rawls thinks it impossible for anyone to be (literally) in the original position, it is merely a thought experiment. To clarify a bit further: Hobbes asks the question "should there be a state?", and, if so, "what powers should it have and what form should it take?". Rawls tries to answer the question "what social and constitutional arrangement is just?". (i.e. in Kant's terminology, Hobbes's argument amounts to a 'hypothetical imperative' whilst Rawls's amounts to a 'categorical imperative.' Mikker ^... 21:04, 16 February 2006 (UTC)