State of nature

The state of nature is a political term of Philosophie, used in the Théories of the social contract to describe the situation of humanity in the absence of State. This philosophical concept, while defining the condition of humanity without State, consequently comes to justify the foundation of this last (and its monopoly of the physical constraint legitimates) and to define its ends. She corresponds by no means to a vision of the History or past of humanity, but consists of a theoretical representation of what would be the interactions in the company in the absence of rationally shared standards. The state of nature, as condition of the men preceding (term which is thus to take in its not historical direction, but structuel) setting-up by the rule of positive law, is a synonym of Anarchie .

Definition

The state of nature is the absence of rule: the men have natural rights (right to nourish themselves, to defend themselves against others, etc) and of natural freedoms. The social Contract founded in a company (or proto-company, since it is the social Contract which gives rise to the company) comes to restrict the rights and freedoms natural by imposing rules necessary to the good performance from the company which has just been instituted. The social Contract and its rules do not alienate the natural rights and freedoms; on the contrary, it gives them a “legal” form. Whereas in the state of nature, the man obeys his instinct, he will obey rather the laws (directed by justice) in the state “of company”. The natural rights thus become civil laws, and natural freedom becomes conventional freedom. Thus, the man always has the right to nourish himself and to defend himself, but it must do it in the respect of the rights and freedoms of others. It is free, but it must respect the freedom of others.

Various visions of the state of nature

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes is one of the first philosophers to introduce the concept of state of nature: it tries to imagine what would be the man in the absence of any social determination, of any law. This state, which existed forever, has as a philosophical interest to include/understand the extent of what the company (state of the humanity framed by the State) brings to the man.

At the time where Hobbes its philosophical reflection undertakes, it is pilot civil war which makes rage in England. For Hobbes, if England is in war, that results from the lack of comprehension of the human nature, in the manner of organizing the social life. It allots this lack of comprehension to the sects nuns, of which each one claim to have the monopoly of the truth and who spread falsenesses on morality, justice, etc

For Hobbes, therefore, the state of nature is a state of war permanent of all against all. Any man seeks to preserve himself; however, with the state of nature, the man is free to use as good seems to him all the means at its disposal to ensure this conservation. This unlimited freedom leads to the universal war: the man becomes a wolf for the man . The state of nature is thus contradictory: the fight of each one for its survival endangers without delay the life of all.

Under these conditions, the men choose to sign between them a contract, by which they are deprived of their freedom, of their autonomy (to be able to give to oneself its own law), to transfer it to a third, the sovereign - which can be a man, a group of men, an assembly - charged with ensuring their safety. However, in instrumental philosophy, each part which signs a contract may find it beneficial to violate the terms of them, as we indicates it the Dilemme of the prisoner. This is why Hobbes gives to the Léviathan, with the sovereign, an enormous coercive capacity: by the fear which it inspires on its subjects, Léviathan must discourage from whoever violating the terms of the social contract, this with an aim which the Community property is preserved and which each one acts not in its single interest, but in the interest of all. The social contract is thus the mechanism by which all bind the fists (by giving up their natural rights/freedoms) by being essential on each one an political authority which would inflict an enormous sorrow with whoever disobeys.

The social contract hobbesien is not a contract signed between the sovereign and the subjects, but between the subjects themselves. Indeed, a contract is an agreement whose terms can be violated. However, the bond between the State (or Léviathan) and the citizens are insoluble. Léviathan is the political identity of the citizen; the citizen cannot be opposed to Léviathan - it is Léviathan. This one is thus not obliged by the contract. Once it is instituted, Léviathan thus rises above the fray, and no one cannot charm its capacity to him. It can apply to its own way the principle of the monopoly of the legitimate physical constraint: if somebody harms the company, it must be put at the variation at once, since the raison d'être of Léviathan is to ensure the safety of its citizens. On the other hand, the sovereign capacity is ordered with its function: each one is free to disobey to him since its safety is in danger. Indeed, at the time when Léviathan becomes a threat for a subject, this one is not bound any more by the terms of the contract and must ensure its own security. The “right to the life” or “right with safety” is thus more fundamental than the social contract, since is precisely to protect this right that the company (and Léviathan) are founded.

Philosophy hobbesienne, and it is there that its main issue resides, can be described as naive. While granting to Léviathan a also immense capacity, Hobbes seems to occult the fact that Léviathan can, thereafter, to act only in its personal interest. Since it is indétestituable, that does it arrive if Léviathan becomes, following its institution, a threat for the company? Logically, each subject recovers its natural rights, and one returns to the state of nature. In addition, the company founded by the social contract hobbesien is a company absolutist: Léviathan east invests of an enormous capacity and has the right to use the force against a subject. That it does it for the good of all, or only in its personal interest, no one cannot prevent some.

John Locke

Contrary to Hobbes, John Locke, another theorist of the social contract, imagines the state of nature like a state of equality and peace, where the men go help mutually where necessary. Indeed, the men are equipped with reason, and their reason the door not to be made of evil to others. There thus exists for Locke a “right natural”, a morals already present in the state of nature. The main issue of the state of nature, for Locke, comes from the private property. Since the resources are limited, nothing could prevent an individual to adapt the totality of the resources for him and its family, and thus to deprive its neighbors of them. The institution of the private property thus becomes problematic, and this one must be controlled, regulated.

In the philosophy of Locke, the private property supposes the exclusion of others, which proves to be a source of potential conflicts. But in context where the resources are limited in abundance, it returns with each one to take only that which he needs and to leave what remains, which would be useless for him, with its counterparts so that each one can benefit from that which he needs. It thus becomes illogical, for example, to adapt all the resources and to let the perishable goods rot because they are not consumed, while preventing others from satisfying their needs and consume them in its place. However, the invention of the money, which is a not-perishable food product, allows material accumulation beyond the limits of the simple need. The money appropriation becomes an end in itself, which comes to legitimate the fact, for an individual, to seek to always extend from advantage its possessions. As it is legitimate to extend its possessions and to acquire always more goods, the individuals will necessarily enter in conflict the ones with the others, since the resources are limited. Institution of this convention which thus led the individuals of the state likely to it state of war is the money, where everyone seeks to increase its fortune with the profit of that of others and where each individual must remain on his guards, and this in any time, to avoid being destroyed, plundered by its congeneric. In order to leave themselves the state of war thus generated and to restore peace and quietude, it becomes necessary for the people to obtain a State, which would ensure each citizen the guarantee that it can enjoy his private property and the use of his goods in full safety vis-a-vis the other citizens.

The State which Locke recommends must be established by a double social contract. A first contract, horizontal, binds the individuals between them and constitutes the civil society in which they will live. In other words, the first social contract institutes the people as people. The second contract, vertical that one, binds the people coldly trained to the State, or to the government. The legitimacy of the State rests on the assent of the individuals. Moreover, it is important to note that the dissolution of the second contract does not dissolve to it first. If the government does not answer the needs and waitings of the population, the second contract dissolves, and the people recover the capacity to obtain a government. Moreover, for Locke, whoever profited from the stabilizing capacity of the State on its private property agrees, by this act, with the legitimacy of the capacity of the State.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Like Hobbes, Rousseau supposes the existence of a “state of nature” before the introduction of the social state. Of course, it is yet only about one theoretical assumption. This one enables him to support its philosophical reflection and, especially, to include/understand what is the “natural man”, stripped of all that the company made of him. In other words, he wants to go back to the individual man, out of the social man.

The natural man is not good with the moral direction of the word

For Rousseau, the natural man is animated of two passions: self-love and pity. The self-love, it is the instinct of self-preservation, with the result that the man seeks to preserve and to preserve itself. Pity encourages, as for it, the man to have a “loathing natural to see perishing or suffering all to be sensitive and mainly our similar”. From there the governing idea of Rousseau: the man is good, it is the company which corrupts it. But attention: if the natural man is good, it is not therefore moral - morals being a social creation, it can only be unaware of what it acts.

The social pact makes of the natural man an authentic man

There exists a mistake on the thought of Rousseau in connection with the state of nature, which led certain commentators to say that it contradicted Discours on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men , where he introduces the man like corrupted by the company, with Of the social Contract , where one can read:

“ This passage of the state likely to it civil statue produces in the man a very remarkable change, in substituent in its control justice with the instinct, and giving to its actions the morality which they missed before. It is then only that the voice of the duty succeeding the physical impulse and the right to the appetite, the man, who up to that point had looked at only itself, is seen forced to act on other principles, and to consult its reason before listening to its inclinations. Though it is deprived in this state of several advantages which it holds of nature, it regains some of so large, its faculties is exerted and develops, its ideas extend, its feelings were ennoblissent, its very whole heart rises so much so that if the abuses this new condition often did not degrade it below that which it left, it should unceasingly bless the happy moment which tore off it forever, and which, of a stupid and limited animal, made an intelligent being and a man. ”

- Of the social Contract or Principles of the political right ; Deliver Premier, Chapitre VIII.

Actually, contradiction does not exist, like it showed Victor Goldschmidt in Anthropologie and policy. Principles of the system of Rousseau : the kindness of the natural man is actually, from a moral or ethical point of view, in-on this side Good and Evil. It is because the passage to the civil statue occurs very badly that the company corrupts the man . What Rousseau announces besides in the quotation above (“ if the abuses this new condition often did not degrade it below that which it left ”). One can formulate it as follows: “The company was born good, it is the man who corrupted it”; being of course that one wants to underline by there the failure - in fact - passage of the state likely to it civil statue in the Second Speech . But this failure in fact, Of the social Contract suggests that it was not to necessarily occur. So although Rousseau was perceived like denying, not without reason, the Original sin , restores the idea of it on a philosophical level - a little like its contemporary Emmanuel Kant, with its test on the Evil published in the religion within the limits of the simple reason . Indeed, like showed it Paul Ricoeur in Finitude and culpability in its interpretation of the Genèse, human being in the moment (of creation), where it gains his freedom, in the moment loses it. And it is well what occurs in the moment even social pact from the start, if one can say, also corrupted, which can refer to the famous sentence which inaugurates Social Contract : “ the Man was born free and everywhere it is in irons ”.

Marxist criticism

to be supplemented.

Quotations

“To make function according to the pure theory the rights and the laws, the lawyers put themselves imaginairement in the state of nature; to see functioning the perfect disciplines, controlling them dreamed of the state of plague” Michel Foucault, Surveiller and punishing .

References

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