The Effects of Reason in the State of Nature

Before the formation of society man existed as an individual, concerned only for his own preservation and subsisting alone within a state of nature. He, along with all other beasts, battled for his own survival using solely his natural attributes. An essential question of the condition of this state of nature, however, is whether man’s unique abilities, particularly those of reason and rational thought, are embodied in what is naturally bestowed upon him, and whether his application of these abilities are in fact beneficial to his species’ fulfillment. One author, Jean Jacques Rousseau, notes that they are not, saying in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality that “the state of reflection is a state against Nature, and the man who meditates is a depraved animal” (Rousseau, 138). Further, it is this use of unnatural rational thought, Rousseau states, which leads man to form society and by it generate his own inequality and misery. Two other authors, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, determine man in the state of nature to be somewhat different, finding that man’s reason is something very much natural and inherent in his character. And while they agree that this ability to reason is also that which allows society, they determine it a vast improvement from the state of nature and thus for the betterment of man. In this way Hobbes and Locke’s analysis of the state of nature and society, although they may hold similarities in their conceptualization of the society’s purpose and formation to Rousseau, differ from him in their determination of man in the state of nature and man’s condition of inequality in society. Furthermore, when comparing the validity of these two opposing views on the state of nature and inequality, one finds the opinion of Hobbes and Locke to be much more agreeable than Rousseau’s, as Rousseau’s conditions for man in the state of nature are found to be slightly romanticized and improbable.

To begin, all three authors in their illustration of the state of nature find that, at its surface, it holds a similar form. They determine that, in essence, each man is directed by his own self-interest and is allowed all that is within his power to preserve himself and all his assets. Locke writes that while subsisting in nature, men live in “a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit” (Locke, 8). Furthermore, they exist also in a state of equality, “wherein all power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” and men live amongst themselves free (Locke, 8). Hobbes makes a similar opinion of man, stating: “Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind” (Hobbes, 183). And, although Hobbes’s state of nature, “where every man is an Enemy to every man” due to his free reign of self-interest (Hobbes, 186), is not quite as peaceful as the one Locke describes, it is nonetheless one of equality