State of Nature Term Analysis

...use race to seize and preserve power. In the traditional contract theory, people leave the state of nature and become civilized when they form society. But in the racial contract, certain people identify... (full context)

According to white social contract theory, Europeans turned Europe from a “presociopolitical space” (the state of nature ) into a “postsociopolitical space” (a civilized land). Meanwhile, they viewed non-Europeans as “savages” (meaning... (full context)

...and settlers portrayed the world outside Europe as a monstrous and immoral version of the state of nature , particularly because it wasn’t Christianized. The trope of “the journey into the interior” depends... (full context)

Thomas Hobbes famously argued that the state of nature is a constant state of war, in which people live “nasty, brutish, and short” lives.... (full context)

...was controversial in Europe because he suggested that Europeans hypothetically could have lived in a state of nature —meaning they could fall to the same level as non-white people. But later social contract... (full context)

Next, John Locke imagined the state of nature as a kind of cooperative society based on the natural laws of money and private... (full context)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously imagined the “noble savage” living freely in the state of nature . However, he only depicted non-white people as savages. Meanwhile, he argued that Europe was... (full context)