Hobbes Argues the State of Nature Is a War of All Against All
Life without a sovereign to enforce order, Hobbes concludes, would be nasty, brutish, and short
Quick facts
- Hobbes's dates
- 1588-1679
- Leviathan published
- 1651 (English); Latin edition, 1668
- State of nature
- "War of every man against every man"
- Solution proposed
- Absolute sovereign by social contract
What happened
Thomas Hobbes, born in 1588, published Leviathan in English in 1651, arguing that without a common power to keep people in order, human life would exist in a state of war, in his words a war of every man against every man, in which nothing could count as unjust because no shared authority defined justice. Hobbes concluded that the only way out of this condition was for individuals to covenant together and transfer their rights to an absolute sovereign, an arrangement he called sovereignty by institution, in exchange for the peace and security that only such an authority could guarantee. Without that authority, Hobbes argued, life would be, in his famous phrase, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Why it matters
Leviathan gave political philosophy its most influential statement of social contract theory grounded not in natural sociability but in fear and self-interest, and its argument that legitimate political authority derives from the consent of the governed, even while justifying an absolute sovereign, set the terms that Locke and later contract theorists would argue against directly.
How we know
Leviathan survives complete in its original 1651 English printing, along with a later Latin edition Hobbes prepared in 1668, and the work's arguments and reception among contemporary readers and critics are documented in surviving correspondence and published responses from the period.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hobbes's Moral and Political Philosophy · Reputable sourceplato.stanford.edu · The domain "plato.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy · Reputable sourceiep.utm.edu · The domain "iep.utm.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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