The state of nature as social critique

This is the second post in a series on the state of nature. In the first post I explored why the state of nature matters today. This post considers how the state of nature idea functions as a tool of social critique.

It is also available as a video on the Social Contract Research Network YouTube channel:

And as a podcast:

We are not neutral

State of nature 101: we are not neutral. Asking people within society – like us – what they think about the state of nature idea is like asking a lion what it thinks of antelopes. It’s a fair enough question, but we shouldn’t expect a neutral, objective answer because the lion eats antelope: it has skin in the game.

In the same way, When we think about the state of nature we’re not taking a view from nowhere; we are looking from within civil society at a way of life outside civil society. This means that whatever we think the state of nature to be will always reflect our own interests, and our own view of ourselves.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: When we are thinking about the state of nature, we are always also thinking about ourselves and our own society, and when we consider what a given philosopher says about the state of nature we are always also considering what that philosopher thinks about his or her own self and his or her own society.

This is how it works: we take something that we think defines us, something we are proud of, something we consider an achievement. Say rationality, refinement or social order. And then we project the absence of that value or achievement back into the state of nature. Do we fancy ourselves refined? Then humans in the state of nature were brutish. Do we take pride in our rationality? Then the “savages” of the state of nature were instinctual and impulsive.

So we don’t look at the state of nature to learn about so-called “primitive” peoples. We look at it to learn about ourselves.

The state of nature and lived experience

Let me ask you a question. It’s impossibly broad, but you see variations of it answered in our newspapers every day. Do you think we’re doing well as a society, or badly?

How on earth can we decide? What measures should we bring to bear on such a question? We decide, in part, on the basis of a set of expectations and ideas about what makes a good society, and we decide by comparing our society to real or imagined alternatives.

And in part, those expectations are set by where we think we came from, and what we think the state of nature was like.

The state of nature is part of what philosopher Charles Taylor has called our social imaginary, the mental and behavioural reality that fills our world just as much as the physical reality of roads, offices and houses. Taylor describes a social imaginary as

the ways in which they imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which underlie these expectations.[1]

The elements of the social imaginary shape our lived experience of ourselves, our society and our everyday life. Where we think we have come from shapes how we experience where we are now. And who we think we used to be shapes who we think we are now.

Here is an example. Test after blind test has been conducted on Pepsi and Coke, and people consistently prefer Pepsi. But when the brand names are revealed before the test begins, people say that they prefer coke. What are we to make of this? That our experience of these drinks is shaped not only by their taste, but by our perceptions and expectations of the two brands.

It’s not that we are deceiving ourselves when we think Coke must taste better. Our experience of preferring Coke is a real experience. It’s just that this experience is about more than the taste alone.

Or take an other example, of two hypothetical families. One is fleeing conflict in a refugee camp in Syria, and another is an affluent family from Beverley Hills. Now re-house those two families in identical two-bedroomed houses in the suburbs of Melbourne. The Syrian family would, in all likelihood and all things being equal, feel relieved, relatively secure and relatively well off, whereas the Beverley Hills family would in all likelihood feel relatively poor and relatively disconnected miserable. We would soon see that it is not the absolute conditions of life that most shape our perceptions of how things are, but the baseline we are comparing them to.

This is because we don’t just live in a world of things, we live in a world of ideas and expectations. And these ideas shape our everyday lived experience just as much as material stuff.

What we think the state of nature is like forms a key part of that social imaginary. Do we think we’ve never had it so good in civil society, or do we think that something precious and vital was lost when we left the state of nature? Do we think things are, over time, getting better, or getting worse?

This is another way of saying that the state of nature is a powerful myth. Philosopher Mary Midgley wrote a book called The Myths we Live By. Listen to her explain the power that myths have over us:

Myths are not lies. Nor are they detached stories. They are imaginative patterns, networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of interpreting the world. They shape its meaning.[2]

Let’s break myths down into two categories: they make visible and they make valuable. Myths make certain things in the world visible to us, and other things relatively obscure. They make certain things in the world valuable to us, and other things relatively dispensable.

Like the famous duck-rabbit image, myths shape what we see. They teach us to expect certain things to exist out there in the world, and they teach us to expect certain things to be valuable out there in the world. And lo and behold, we find what we are looking for. This is one reason why liberals and conservatives can both look out on the same world and conclude that it confirms their view: the myths they live by condition what they experience.

The state of nature is one such myth we live by. It is civilization’s own just-so story, our modern creation myth. It teaches us what to look for – both in ourselves and in others – and it teaches us what to value. Was the state of nature nasty, brutish and short? Then we will value our refinement and long life expectancy. Was the state of nature peaceful and harmonious? Then we will lament our rat race and society of ubiquitous competition. Mythologizing the past is a key way that we find our orientation in the present, and a key way in which we develop a shared identity.

So the choice each of us faces is not between being shaped by myths or not being shaped by them. Our choice is between denying we are shaped by myths and leaving ourselves ignorant and vulnerable to how they are forming us, or recognising their power and becoming active in the construction of our own social imaginaries. If you want to go deeper into this, Midgley’s The Myths we Live By is a great place to start.

So let me ask you that question. Without over-thinking it, what is your first response: do you think that life in your society today is as good as human life has ever been, and likely to get better in the medium to long term, or do you think that something is fundamentally wrong with society, that it is dragging people down, and is likely to get worse?

On balance, do you think there is something pure and natural about prehistoric life that we have lost and that outweighs all the technological gains of modern society, or do you see the gains of modern society as outweighing whatever we may have lost since the state of nature in terms of authenticity or lifestyle?

You tell me your state of nature, and I will tell you who you are.

Binary thinking

But what sort of myth is the state of nature? One striking feature of its structure is that it is binary: there are two and only two conditions. You are either in the state of nature, or you are in civil society. The switch is either on, or it is off.

This way of thinking gives us security: we are safely inside civil society and as far away from the state of nature as you possibly can be. It also keeps things simple: we don’t need to worry about HOW civil our society is, because we know for certain we are not in the state of nature.

And just in case you think that such binary thinking is confined to eighteenth century political treatises, let me remind you of the binary language we use in relation to society today: we talk about “developing nations” and “developed nations” (“developed” making it sound like there is no more developing to do!) We talk, still, about the “first world” and the “third world”. And we talk about “western nations”, sometimes as opposed to the orient, and sometimes to the global south. Last but not least, we look back on an age of “superstition” from our society of “enlightenment”.

State of nature as norm

Let’s think about this last point a bit more. We seem to like defining ourselves against other individuals, groups or societies. In fact, we can’t really understand ourselves unless we contrast ourselves with something we are not.

You will know the story about the fish who was asked “what is water?”, and answered “what is water?” because it had only ever experienced water and so had never thought about it before. In the same way, civil society doesn’t really know what to think of itself unless it has something to compare itself to. Are we doing well, or is our society a disaster? Well, it depends what you compare it to.

And what you compare it to is always a strategic choice. We have an interest in painting the state of nature in particular ways, either to justify or to critique our own way of life, just as Rousseau did.

• If we want to say that our society is great and we should protect social order at all costs, we will paint a state of nature that is (to use Hobbes’s phrase) “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, and we will project that rather undesirable state as the alternative to what we have.

• But if we want to say that our society is corrupt or unfair, we will project a state of nature that is full of satisfied, equal, compassionate people, so that we look so much the worse by comparison. And if we become obsessed with the purity and the authenticity of the natural, it’s probably a sign that we are dissatisfied with ourselves and our society.

Because most of us like to take comfort in the thought that we’re doing pretty well really, most versions of the state of nature tend to be decidedly worse than our contemporary civil society. Rousseau’s Second Discourse is an exception to this rule, and that’s one reason why it’s so fascinating.

So the state of nature sets a norm, a set of coordinates in terms of which to situate our own society, and by virtue of which we can judge it.

Just in case you think that this practice of defining yourself against an “other” to understand who you are is just something that other people do, let me try and bring it closer to home. In the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps you see yourself as “not like those irresponsible anti-vaxxers who put the rest of us in danger”, conversely you may see yourself as “not like those gullible vaccine sheep who believe anything the government tells them”. Political parties in all countries define themselves in large part over against their opposition, and we do the same with our politics: I’m not like those liberals; I’m not like those conservatives. Just notice how news outlets with a political bias often do more talking about the other side than they do about themselves!

State of nature orientalism

In all of this, state of nature discourse has a lot in common with “orientalism”, a term associated with the late social critic Edward Said and his book of that name. Orientalism is the way in which, over centuries, the West has projected an image of the Orient as its own other: the west is rational, therefore the Orient is superstitious; the West has science so, obviously, the Orient doesn’t, and so on.

The Orient is the “other” by contrast with which the West can understand and take pride in its achievements, and by virtue of which it can look down on those who are different to it.

Let’s think for a moment about the similarities and differences between the discourses of orientalism and the state of nature.

Similarities

• Orientalism and the State of Nature are both discourses the modern West has used to understand and justify itself.
• Both orientalism and the state of nature stand to the West as an Other.
• A lot of state of nature discourse directly references non-Western Others, as does orientalism.
• In orientalism, the Other is our own genealogy (the orient as the “cradle of civilization”), and the state of nature is also presented as the West’s own genealogy.

Differences

• State of nature discourse focuses on supposedly non-organised societies of hunter gatherers, whereas Orientalism recognises the organised societies of the East.
• The oriental Other is geographically and temperamentally distant, but the state of nature remains buried in who the West is, and threatens to return.

• Whereas orientalism compares the West with another, alternative culture, the state of nature discourse seeks to compare western society with some supposed neutral baseline: not another culture, but a cultureless natural existence.

With some caution then, I think that we can talk of a “state of nature orientalism”: a way that the West thinks about itself and justifies itself via the other that remains hidden within it.

Orientalism isn’t really about the East, and Said quite rightly points out that the appropriate question to ask is not “is the East really the way it is painted in orientalist discourse”? What’s interesting in it is not whether it is true, but what it reveals about the West.

In the same way, it is missing the point to ask “did the state of nature really happen as Rousseau and others describe it?” And what is important about state of nature discourse is not, in the first instance, whether it is true, but what work it does for those who use it. The question of whether it is true is not trivial, and I hope to return to the question in a future post, but it is not where state of nature discourse is at its most interesting.

So the state of nature is no quaint historical idea. It was, and it remains, a powerful tool of self-definition, self-justification and self-critique.

[1] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007) 171–2.

[2] Mary Midgley, The Myths we Live By (London: Routledge, 2004) 1.