The Human Nature Of The Prince, Thomas Hobbes And James...

The ability to think, or reason, of our surrounding is the gift that separates us from our ancestors. Furthermore, human qualities such as strong emotions come from what we think is important to us. Actions, whether they are good or bad, also derive from our most inner thoughts. The question now is what type of reasoning is natural to us all? This human nature is a topic explored by thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, Niccollà ² Machiavelli in The Prince, Thomas Hobbes and James Madison in The Essential Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. Human nature is the force that pushes an individual to his or her actions. Political theory, as a result, is shaped around this nature for the sake of survival. One way to get man to his natural instincts is by hypothetically eliminating every trace of progress that has occurred. This includes anything from a established government to the discovery of fire. That was precisely what Thomas Hobbes called mankind s state of nature and stat ed that it would bring about, ... no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (Hobbes, 186) Whether it is the fear of dying or of others, the human nature of man to Hobbes was fear. Therefore, an ideal government was meant to prevent man from falling back to that state of nature. However, one more issue aroused