Bellum omnium contra omnes? No! Nice guys finish first [Part 1]

Thomas Hobbes  proposed a very strong interpretation of human nature in the Leviathan, that could be summed up by the following statement:

"The state of men without civil society (which state may be called the state of nature) is nothing but a war of all against all; and that in that war, all have a right to all things."

Thereby the only possibility to avoid this state of nature is the commitment of your personal freedom to the Leviathan, who embodies a central government that acts only for common wealth.

This "homo homini lupus" theory seems to fit very well to human nature if we take in consideration many recent fact such as 2011 Norway attacks, 9/11, or the high rate of homicides in many cities or countries.


The fallacy of this kind of argument is that considering single events, obscures long terms tendences. If we consider for example the trend of homicides, we'll see that they drastically reduced through history. In London the 110 homicides per 100,000 rate in 14th century declined to fewer than one in the 20th century. Violent deaths declined from 500 every 100,000 on archaic society to 50 in the Middle Ages to 6 today worldwide. Also if we talk about war, the data agree with this theory: from 15% of popolation killed in wars, we reached today a few hundreds of percent level.


Could this mean that Hobbes was wrong? Not necessarily. Maybe human nature is similar to the one he describe, but the development of society helped to mask it. This led to the requirement benevolent interaction. It is indeed the only way to achieve a great role in society.


This means that our social interactions are not made for generous purpouse, but to satisfy our "Wille zur Macht", in english the "will to power". This idea was firstly propose by the german phylosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

He believed that the leading force that guided man's action was the will to reach highest positions possible in life. Freud proposed a similar idea as well with his pleasure principle (the will to pleasure). Maybe those theories are a proper explanation to the "domestication of man", which is related to the fact that had to face the compromise to reach higher goals in society.