State of Nature Assumption

What the state of nature assumption means

The state of nature assumption is the foundational, usually unexamined belief that each of us holds about whether human beings are fundamentally selfish or fundamentally cooperative. It’s one of the most powerful hidden assumptions in all of political and moral thinking, because it shapes your instincts about trust, punishment, freedom, authority, and virtually every policy question you’ll ever encounter - without ever announcing itself.

In the 17th century, Thomas Hobbes argued that without laws and authority, human life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” People are fundamentally self-interested, he said, and only behave well because structures force them to. A century later, Jean-Jacques Rousseau offered the opposite view: humans are born naturally cooperative and compassionate, and it’s civilisation itself - with its inequality, property, and competition - that corrupts them.

This isn’t just an old philosophical debate. It’s a fork in the road that almost everyone has taken without realising it. The important thing to understand is that most people have never consciously examined which side they’re on. The assumption was absorbed early - through family, culture, experience, media - and now operates as an invisible foundation beneath everything else. It doesn’t feel like an assumption. It feels like reality.

How the state of nature assumption shapes thinking

The invisible filter

Your state of nature assumption works like a framing effect that you never chose and rarely notice. It determines which evidence looks relevant and which arguments feel persuasive. A Hobbesian hearing about a community self-policing project thinks: “That will fall apart the moment resources get tight.” A Rousseauian hearing about the same project thinks: “Of course it works - people cooperate naturally when you give them the chance.”

Both responses feel like common sense to the person having them. Neither feels like an assumption. This is what makes it so powerful and so difficult to examine - it sits beneath the level of conscious reasoning, filtering everything before it reaches your awareness. And once the filter is in place, confirmation bias ensures it stays there: you’ll notice evidence that supports your view of human nature and overlook evidence that contradicts it.

The selective application

One of the most revealing features of the state of nature assumption is that people rarely apply it consistently. Hobbesians are often cynical about humanity in general but trusting of their own communities, families, and social circles. The cynicism is reserved for strangers, out-groups, and “other people” - a pattern that maps directly onto in-group/out-group bias. “My group is trustworthy. It’s everyone else who can’t be trusted.”

Rousseauians show the mirror image: a general faith in human goodness that sometimes struggles to account for genuine malice or exploitation. The optimism about human nature can become its own blind spot, making it harder to recognise when trust is being deliberately abused.

Neither position is entirely right, of course. The research on human cooperation - particularly the work summarised in Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History - suggests that humans are wired for both cooperation and competition, and that which tendency dominates depends heavily on the structures and incentives that surround them. But the state of nature assumption forces people into one camp or the other, long before they encounter the evidence.

The policy cascade

What makes this assumption so consequential is that it doesn’t just affect one opinion. It cascades. If you believe people are fundamentally self-interested, then strong enforcement, surveillance, harsh penalties, and tightly controlled institutions all feel like sensible precautions. If you believe people are fundamentally cooperative, then trust, autonomy, rehabilitation, and decentralised systems feel like the obvious approach. The same person will reach different conclusions on crime, education, welfare, immigration, workplace management, and parenting - all from the same starting assumption about human nature.

This is why first principles thinking is so valuable here. It asks you to identify and examine your foundational assumptions rather than building on them blindly. And the state of nature assumption is one of the most foundational assumptions anyone can examine.

The state of nature assumption in the real world

Crime and punishment

Someone with a Hobbesian worldview hears about rising crime and instinctively reaches for stronger deterrents - more police, harsher sentences, tighter control. The logic is clear: people will misbehave unless the cost of misbehaving is high enough. Someone with a Rousseauian worldview hears the same news and asks what’s broken in the system - poverty, inequality, lack of opportunity - because their starting assumption is that people don’t naturally choose to harm others. Same data, completely different policy instincts, and the underlying assumption is never stated.

The welfare debate

Ask whether unemployment benefits should be generous or minimal and watch the state of nature assumption do its work. The Hobbesian instinct says: make benefits too comfortable and people won’t bother working, because people are fundamentally self-interested. The Rousseauian instinct says: most people want to contribute and will return to work when they can, so a safety net is compassion, not a trap. Both sides think they’re arguing about economics. They’re arguing about human nature.

The just-world fallacy often reinforces the Hobbesian position here. If you believe people generally get what they deserve, then poverty must reflect poor choices rather than structural disadvantage - and welfare becomes a reward for bad behaviour rather than a safety net for bad luck.

Trust in institutions and regulation

When a new regulation is proposed - say, tighter rules on social media companies - the Hobbesian says: of course we need this, corporations will exploit every gap they can find. The Rousseauian says: most businesses want to do the right thing, and over-regulation stifles good actors along with bad ones. Again, the policy argument is a proxy for a deeper disagreement about what people (and the organisations they build) will do when nobody is watching.

This debate plays out within the Overton window - the range of positions considered acceptable in mainstream discourse. When the dominant cultural mood is Hobbesian (as it often is after economic crises, pandemics, or security threats), the window shifts toward control, enforcement, and restriction. When it’s Rousseauian (as it can be during periods of social progress or cultural optimism), the window shifts toward trust, autonomy, and liberalisation.

Why the state of nature assumption matters for critical thinking

The state of nature assumption matters because it’s one of the few beliefs that shapes virtually every other belief you hold about society and politics. It’s not one opinion among many - it’s the foundation on which most of your other opinions are built.

Making this assumption visible - in yourself and in others - is one of the most powerful things you can do to understand disagreement. When two people argue about a specific policy and can’t find common ground, the problem is often not the policy. It’s that they’re starting from different assumptions about human nature and neither has named it.

The most useful question isn’t “are people good or selfish?” - because the answer is clearly both, depending on circumstances. The useful question is: “which assumption am I starting from right now, and how is it shaping what I’m willing to consider?” Once you can see the assumption, you can hold it lightly enough to also see the other side.