Question

write a note on the liberal conception of the state

Answer 1

According to Hobbes, the lives of individuals in the state of nature were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”, a ‘state in which self-interest and the absence of rights and contracts prevented the ‘social’, or society. Life was ‘anarchic’ (without leadership/ the concept of sovereignty). Individuals in the state of nature were a political and a social. This state of nature is followed by the social contract. But the state system, which grew out of the social contract, was anarchic (without leadership). Just as the “individuals in the state of nature had been sovereigns and thus guided by self-interest and the absence of rights, so states now acted in their self-interest in competition with each other. Just like the state of nature, states were thus bound to be in conflict because there was no sovereign over and above the state (i.e. more powerful) capable of = imposing social-contract laws.