This is Hobbes’s picture of human nature. We are needy and vulnerable. We have easily led astray in our attempts to know the world around us. Our capacity to reason is as fragile as our capacity to know; it relies upon language and is prone to error and undue influence. When we act, we may do so selfishly or impulsively, or in ignorance, on the basis of faulty reasoning or bad theology, or others’ emotive speech.
What is the political fate of this rather pathetic sounding creature—that is, of us? Unsurprisingly, Hobbes thinks little happiness can be expected of our lives together. The best we can hope for is peaceful life under an authoritarian-sounding sovereign. The worst, on Hobbes’s account, is what he calls the natural condition of mankind, a state of violence, insecurity, and constant threat. In outline, Hobbes’s argument is that the alternative to government is a situation no one could reasonably wish for and that any attempt to make government accountable to the people must undermine it, so threatening the situation of non-government that we must all wish to avoid. Our only reasonable option, therefore, is a “sovereign” authority that is totally unaccountable to its subjects. Let us deal with the “natural condition” of non-government, also called the “state of nature,” first of all.