Hobbes’s Conception of the State of Nature from 1640 to 1651: Evolution and Ambiguities

Abstract The state of nature, seen as entailing a general state of war, is probably the most widely known of Hobbes’s concepts. And deservedly so, for not only is it the notion which is the main premiss of his whole ethical and political system, but it also became obligatory for later authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuric-s, when writing on similar topics, to begin their accounts from their version of the state of nature. But Hobbes’s natural state is none the clearer for all that. In this paper I shall try to show the hesitations, uncertainties, and alterations it undergoes in Hobbes’s different works, especially in the three political treatises: The Elemenis ofLaw (1640), De Give (1642), and Leviathan ( 165 I). That some parts of the text of De Give are no older than the 1647 edition will not be ignored.’ For the sake of brevity, chapter 14 of the first part of The Elements, chapter I of De Give, and chapter I 3 of Leviathan will occasionally be referred to as the ‘Natural State Chapters’.