Lou Marinoff on Hobbes in TLS:

'Needless to say, this is a recipe for endless conflict, exacerbated by Hobbes’s two-fold notion of equality. On the one hand, we are equal in the most dangerous sense that the weakest can kill the strongest, “either by secret machination or by confederacy with others”; on the other, we are equal in that each one nurtures a similar hope of attaining his own particular ends. Thus the three principal causes of quarrel are competition (over any resource that one seeks to monopolize); diffidence (mutual mistrust of one another and the desire to protect or defend one’s resources); and glory (preservation of one’s reputation, aggrandizement of one’s status, or defense of one’s honour). So by our very natures, we are drawn into perpetual strife, which Hobbes calls a “war of all against all”. We may forge temporary alliances, but only to stave off graver threats or more imminent perils. This incessant war is known as the Hobbesian “state of nature”, the universal and inevitable initial condition of humankind, in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Hobbes goes on to emphasize that in this state there is no right or wrong, no justice or injustice, for there is not yet any established – albeit artificial – standard by which any such value judgments can be made. This anticipates by two centuries Darwin’s “struggle for existence” among life forms, in which any behaviour that conduces to survival is entirely self-justifying. Hobbes then cleverly poses a rhetorical but “trick” question, calculated to push his main point home. To those who might cavil at his grim portrayal of human nature, he inquires whether they journey armed and well-accompanied, whether they lock their doors at night, and whether they secret away their valuables at home, among “trusted” servants; even though they inhabit a polity with criminal laws and a justice system in place: “does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions”, he asks, “as I do by my words?”

Having inveigled the reader’s affirmation, that we must constantly safeguard our persons and possessions, he continues with a declaration that itself carried a death sentence for heresy: “But neither of us accuse man’s nature in it. The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no sin”. With that, Hobbes flatly contradicts Augustine, and repudiates the sacrosanct doctrine of Original Sin. This alone was sufficient to see Leviathan immediately placed on the Roman Church’s index of banned books.'

Read the article here.

Needless to say that I sympathize with Hobbes. The war of all against all cannot be overcome, but with the help of social contracts and by transferring some of our powers to the authorities, we can make this war more benign and pleasurable.