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STATE OF MORALITY: ANALYSIS ON HOBBES', LOCKE'S, AND ROUSSEAU'S STATE OF NATURE

Vicente Raja Galián POLI 342A: Western Political Theory December, 2011

2 The constitution of our political order is always based on a tension, on a fighting, on an opposition between our nature and our life within a society. When Sophocles writes on Antigone this opposition is illustrated in the pain of thelatter: “She [Antigone] gave a shrill cry like a bird she sees her nest empty, and the bed deserted where her nestlings had lain” 1 . Antigone's cry is this tension hypostatized; it is the sensible manifestation of this fighting. It is the cry of a woman who is guided by her feelings for her brother and faces the obligation that society imposes on her. The power of this image, the power of Antigone,will be chosen by Hegel as the better example of the foundational moment of the whole Western culture, in this sense, the German philosopher will understand the development of our culture as the echo of Antigone's cry2 . If we track this idea in our political philosophy, social contract theorists appear as the high point in the reflection about it. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau formulate a theorythat, ultimately, is based on this opposition. According to them, our political order rises up from our state of nature as a way to avoid the problems of it when we live in society. They develop, hence, a distinction between our state of nature (in the case of Antigone, the love for her brother) and our political order (laws and rules that Antigone faces), and, in this distinction, the concept andarticulation of the state of nature is a main point. For this reason, in this essay we want to a nalyze the different notions of state of nature that each author has, and evaluate the various implications that they have. Our main questions will be: What is the state of nature according to Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau? What is the engine of the differences between their three visions? Do their visionshave any problems? My thesis in this essay will be: (1) the state of nature is not a historical time before our societies (it is just a hypothetical situation of human beings without a State-political order) , and (2) its development from Hobbes to Rousseau is based on the gradual introduction of the morality as a part of the human nature, but (3) this introduction does not have the consequencesthat both Locke

1

Sophocles, Antigone, in Classics of Moral and Political Theory, edited by Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992) 11, 420-425 2 This idea is present in all references to Antigone both in Phenomenology of Spirit and Philosophy of Right.

3 and Rousseau expect (i.e., the human nature considered as a moral nature does not ensure an state ofpeaceful -as Lock wants- or a state of complete happiness -as Rousseau proposes), rather it is one of the things that we try to normalize (namely, one of the things that we try to make universal) when we constitute any political establishment. In order to achieve the purpose of our essay, we will explain the main points of the three theories (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), we will evaluate theabsence/presence of morality in them, and we will try to show why we think that these theories do not understand correctly the role of morality in human nature and our political order. But first, we will do a preliminary reflection concerning the first point of our thesis: Is the state of nature a historical time? This first point seems obvious if we pay attention to our biological and historicaldevelopment. On one hand, we are already born within a society, so human beings live in relation with each other since his birth. Even if we do not have any other relation, we have a relationship with our mother (and, in our first years, we depend on her) 3 . On the other hand, we do not know any historical time when human beings live without society. We are social animals and this condition leads us to...