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Originally Posted by ehh19
Is it just by default, then, that a state of nature has existed? Is it then because men have been responsible for law that it must have been the default while they thought up law? I guess I'm trying to ask WHY he thinks it HAS and DOES exist, specifically. Why can't it be that the man was always in a state of self-law (or is that just naming 'state of nature' something different). Pretty much I guess what I really would like to know is what premise he has to support that it DOES and HAS existed.
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He says in the paragraph you quoted that the international world is the state of nature. This means that there are no meaningful laws regulating the behavior of nations. The other important example he gives is of "uncivilized" places like America, where one also finds the state of nature.
The state of nature had existed even in Europe, if you went back far enough in time, I imagine Locke would say. I think that Locke's state of nature was supposed to be a historical account of the origins of government in addition to being a normative tool.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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