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Dinesh / Photos

Figure 1.2

Detail from the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes, 'De Cive (1642) featuring indigenous people living in the state of nature
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Dinesh said:

A century before Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes had vividly described the state of nature in 1651 as a place where “man is wolf to man,” where life is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” For his contemporaries these descriptions have conjured up images from the Book of Genesis and the newly-founded American colonies. Hobbes did indeed offer some speculation that Native American lived in the state of nature (Figure 1.2) writing of “the savage people in many places of America” whose “concord” depended only on “natural lust,” natural man who “have no government at all.” But in the same breath, he insisted that a primeval condition was not the example to focus on; his state of nature was best captured by the descent into ‘civil Warre.”. . . Page 21

The INVENTION of PREHISTORY
2 months ago
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