Hobbes Among the Savages: Politics, War, and Enmity in the State of Nature

What is it about?

The article proposes to reinterpret Hobbes's theory of the state of nature in light of Americanist ethnography and political anthropology, focusing on the works of Pierre Clastres and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. The state of nature is usually conceived as a “primitive” state overcome by the social contract, a conception that reinforces racist and colonial conceptions about Indigenous peoples. By engaging with ethnography, I try to take seriously the philosophical conceptions and political formations of Amerindian peoples, which, on the one hand, are different from ours, but on the other, reveal something important about ours.

Featured Image