QuestionsWhat is a just society?Without a state, the war of all against all
What is a just society?The contract

Without a state, the war of all against all

Thomas Hobbes 1588 · 1679Without a state, life would be solitary, brutish and short.
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What it claims

As long as people live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a war of everyone against everyone.

Why

Humans are roughly equal, so rivals for the same things, so distrustful: without a common power, war follows.

In short

"Without a state, the war of all against all" is an argument by Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, ch. 13) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: the contract). Its claim: As long as people live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a war of everyone against everyone. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Leviathan, ch. 13
Valid with an implicit premise

Imagine there were no police, no judges, no laws. Hobbes does not say this once existed everywhere: he asks what human life would be without a common power. His answer: a war of everyone against everyone, where life is "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". And all this without assuming that people are wicked.

P1People are roughly equal: the weakest can kill the strongest, by cunning or by joining with others. Nobody is safe through his own strength alone.
P2From this equality comes competition: if two people desire the same thing and cannot both enjoy it, they become enemies.
P3From competition comes distrust: when you cannot know who will attack, the most reasonable way to protect yourself is to strike first.
P4Each also wants to be valued at his own rate, and answers contempt by doing harm: that is glory.
P5 · implicit premiseThese passions, which we observe in people living in society, are those of man as such: they would be there too without a state.
P6When these three causes of quarrel act without a common power to keep everyone in awe, there is a known disposition to fight. And that is what war is: not necessarily battles, but the lack of any assurance that there will be none.
Therefore, as long as people live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a war of everyone against everyone.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where people are equal, rivalrous, distrustful and hungry for esteem in society, but where these passions do not exist without a state: then there is no war in the state of nature.
With its six premises, the conclusion follows. Without P5 it no longer does: competition, distrust and glory could have been born of life in society, and man without a state could be free of them. Hobbes does not write this in the chapter, but it is his method: "read thy self", since passions are the same in all men. This is exactly the point Rousseau will attack. Note: Hobbes does not need people to be wicked. It is enough that they are equal, desire the same things and cannot know whom to trust.
Analogy. Hobbes himself proposes the experiment: look at what you do even though there are laws and police. You lock your door, you lock your chests, you do not set off alone at night on a lonely road. What would you do if there were nobody to call?

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Aristotle 330 BC · attacks premise 2

Man is by nature a political animal, even more than bees and other herd animals. Living together is neither an accident nor a calculation: it is part of our nature, and speech was given to us for it.

Hobbes replies
Hobbes
This axiom, received by almost everyone, is false. We do not seek others by nature, but for the honour or profit they bring us. And men are not bees: they constantly compete for honour, which bees do not. The bees' agreement is natural; that of men exists only by covenant, which is artificial.
Rousseau 1755 · attacks premise 5

Hobbes and the others carried into the state of nature ideas taken from society: they spoke of savage man and painted civil man. Rivalry, vanity and the desire for glory are the work of society. Natural man, solitary and with few needs, has no reason to make war.

Hobbes replies
Hobbes Hobbes's anticipated reply (Leviathan, 1651)
I do not believe this state of war was ever general over all the world. But there are many places where people live so now: in many places of America the "savage people" have no government at all, except that of small families, and live in that brutish manner. And we can see what life would be without a common power to fear from what men who lived under a peaceful government degenerate into in a civil war.
The debate goes on (our summary) Rousseau has his rejoinder. The peoples observed in America already live in groups: they are far from the first state of nature, and the Caribs, whom he takes to be closest to it, are among the most peaceful. As for the men of the civil war, they are precisely civil men. Hobbes had already answered a related objection (preface to De Cive, 1647): his thesis does not require the wicked to be many; it is enough that we cannot tell them apart for everyone to have to be on guard. So the debate is about the starting point: does man without a state live alone (Rousseau) or among others (Hobbes)? Both rely on travellers' reports now judged unreliable.
Locke 1689 · attacks premise 6

The state of nature is not the state of war, though "some men" have confused them. It has a law, the law of nature, which obliges everyone: reason teaches that no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. War only begins with unjust violence.

Hobbes replies
Hobbes Hobbes's anticipated reply (Leviathan, 1651)
The laws of nature do exist, and reason finds them: justice, equity, doing to others as we would be done to. But without the terror of some power to make them observed, they are contrary to our natural passions, which carry us to partiality, pride and revenge. Covenants, without the sword, are but words. So, notwithstanding the laws of nature, if there is no power great enough for our security, every man may lawfully rely on his own strength for caution against all other men.
The debate goes on (our summary) Locke grants that people are bad judges in their own cause and that this is a real inconvenience of the state of nature: it justifies a government. But for him this inconvenience does not make the state of nature a permanent war, and it does not justify absolute power (see the next argument).
What today's voices say
Defend it
Steven PinkerHe calls Hobbes undervalued: violence comes from rational, self-interested agents, and a strong state (the Leviathan) reduces it.