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The concept of a state of nature was first positied by the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. Hobbes described the concept in the Latin phrase bellum omnium contra omnes, meaning "the war of all against all."
What we know about the social behavior of indigenous peoples in undeveloped countries shows that that might be wrong in point of historical fact. It is very rare, indeed, that a group of people lacks anything like a government at all, even if the "government" consists only of tribal elders. That's why the state of nature is called a "useful fiction" or legal fiction. More complex governments with more fully developed social hierarchies come into being with the invention of agriculture, which implies more complex economies including markets and food storage facilities. These things require collective measures to operate and defend.
Hobbes does not base his argument on the historical existence of such a state.
Hobbes believed that human beings in the state of nature would behave "badly" towards one another ("badly" in the sense of the morality that we would commonly apply: but Hobbes argued that people had every right to defend themselves by whatever means, in the absence of order). Famously, he believed that such a state would lead to a "war of every man against every man" and make life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes's negative view of human character was shaped at least in part by the ChristianChristian cross and its many variations are widely recognized as an ancient Christian symbol. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. Although Christians generally chara doctrines of original sinEssentially, Original sin is the doctrine, shared in one form or another by most Christian churches, that the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden changed or damaged human nature, such that all human beings since then are innately predisposed to sin, and total depravityCalvinism Theological terms Total depravity is a theological term primarily associated with Calvinism, which interprets the Bible to teach that, as a consequence of the Fall of man, every person born into the world is enslaved to the service of sin. In ot; the Christian tradition is generally at one with Hobbes in supporting the need for government. However, Hobbes would strongly disagree with the Christian view of the innate, inherent, and inescapable sinThis page is about sin in the context of religion. For other meanings, see Sin (disambiguation Sin has always been a term most usually used in a religious context, and today describes any lack of conformity to the will of God; especially, any willful disrfulness of human beings: in Hobbes's view, these problems are soluble by good government. As he incisively stated in its "De cive. Epistola dedicatoria", borrowing a well known aphorism from PlautusTitus Maccius Plautus was a comic playwright of the Roman Republic. The years of his life are uncertain, but his plays were first produced between about 205 and 184 BCE. Twenty-one plays survive. Plautus' comedies, which are the earliest surviving intact's Asinaria : "homo homini lupus" (man is wolf to man).
Hobbes's view was challenged in the eighteenth century by Jean-Jacques RousseauJean Jacques Rousseau ( June 28, 1712 July 2, 1778) was a Swiss-French philosopher, writer, political theorist, and self-taught composer. Biography of Rousseau Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and died in Ermenonville (28 miles northeast of Paris, who affirmed instead that people in a state of nature would be born good; their bad habits are the products of civilizationFor alternative meanings see Civilization (disambiguation Teotihuacan, Mexico. Building projects of this size require the social organization found in civilizations. A civilization or civilisation has a variety of meanings related to human society. The te, and specifically social hierarchies, property, and markets. Rousseau's view underlines much of the Romantic period's political thinking, including the thought of Karl Marx.