State of nature

A hypothetical condition of human life before or without political society and government, used to examine authority, rights, and social contracts.

Thomas Hobbes: An English philosopher whose political theory describes life without government as insecure and violent. His state of nature makes fear and the need for sovereign authority central.
Social contract: A theory that political authority or social order arises from an agreement among individuals. It models the transition from a prepolitical condition to legitimate collective rule.
War of all against all: Hobbes's description of the condition in which individuals lack a common power to restrain conflict. It is the most severe and memorable version of Hobbes's state of nature.
Natural rights: Rights believed to belong to people independently of government or legal enactment. Locke treats such rights as present before political society and binding on rulers.
Social justice: The fair distribution of rights, opportunities, resources, and social burdens. John Rawls adapts the contract tradition to derive principles for a just society.
John Locke: An English philosopher who grounded political authority in natural rights and consent. His state of nature includes natural law and rights to life, liberty, and property.
Consent of the governed: The principle that a government's legitimacy depends on the agreement of those it governs. Locke uses consent to explain how people may authorize political society.
Social contract theory: A family of theories explaining political authority or social order through agreement among individuals. The state of nature is a foundational device within this broader tradition.
Human nature: The characteristic capacities, motives, and dispositions attributed to human beings. Different assumptions about human motivation produce sharply different imagined prepolitical lives.
Original position: Rawls's hypothetical choice situation in which parties select principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance. It recasts the state-of-nature device without claiming to describe humanity's actual past.

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