The humane truth
published : 11 Dec 2020 at 04:00
In the treatise Politics (328 BC), Aristotle wrote that man was by nature a social animal, and society was something in nature that preceded the individual. The human that didn t partake in society, he opined, was either a beast or god. The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, delved into a darker side and argued that if men wanted to survive they would voluntarily uphold laws, give up their rights and obey an absolute power that protected them. Left on their own, men were naturally unsociable and didn t depend on anyone but themselves to survive. Self-preservation was their ultimate objective. They perpetually competed against one another. Their natural state was a state of war, in which they distrusted their own species and reasoned with a fist in order to attain power over their fellow beings.