Continual Conflict In The Law Of Nature By Thomas Hobbes

According to Hobbes men are actually engaged in continual fighting in the absence of civil authority to keep the peace. It signifies nothing more than the constant fear or danger of war and violent death. There is “continual fear, and the danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In the state of nature people stand exposed to the danger of attack by others, and have no security except what their own strength and cunningness might provide. Under such a condition Hobbes thinks that there can be no industry; for no one can be certain of reaping the fruits of his labour; no culture of the earth, no commodious buildings, no instruments to remove one thing from one place to another ; no arts and no letters, and no society. What is worst of all, there is intolerable fear, and the danger of violent death; and the life of man most uncertain.

The natural man of Hobbes has no natural obligation towards his fellow beings. There are no such things as a community of men, or a social or communal good, but only an aggregate of self-centred individuals, the separate good of each of whom comes into clash with that of another.

It may also be added that in such a state there can be neither right nor wrong, neither justice nor injustice.

A law of nature is defined by Hobbes as a precept or general rule, found out by reason, which forbids a man to do that which is destructive of life or is otherwise unfavourable to its preservation. It generally obelise a man to renounce some part of the natural liberty which every individual possesses in the state of nature to do what he deems necessary for self preservation, for the more certain realisation of the remainder. In the system of Hobbes there is a great diffe...

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... come into being in two ways, either by institution when men unite of their own accord to rid themselves of the ceaseless strife and conflict of the state of nature, or by conquest or acquisition when the union is the result of the superior strength of some individual who threatens them with destruction. The essence of the state remains the same whatever be the manner of its coming into existence. It is, however, best expressed when the state is instituted as the result of the social contract among persons.

According to Hobbes the only method of instituting a commonwealth is that men should confer “all their powers and strength upon one man or one assembly of men.” Then only the plurality of wills, from which conflict and clash ensue, will be reduced to unity and every one would “acknowledge himself to be the author of whatever is done by the ruler so constituted”.