Beginning of Essay
State of Nature To trigger off any philosophy on what should be the characteristics of the state we must first imagine living in a state of nature (living with the lack of a state). Since we cannot trace back to any time that we've been without government, we must ....

Middle of Essay
.... what you can keep leads to violence. "where there are no restraints on people's actions, it leads to the war of 'all against all'" says Hobbes. So, Hobbes is basically saying, any state is better than the state of nature, be glad that the state is there. Even if it is a corrupt state, you will benefit more from the corrupt state than you would from the State of Nature which is completely lawless. However, this vision of society which leaves power out of the hands of the people and leads to criticisms from philosophers such as Locke and Rousseau, who counters Hobbes with their own ideas of the "state of nature". In Locke's "State of Nature" th ....