When, in The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes notes that in the state of nature there exists a "warre of every man against every man", he urges that in such a state "nothing can be unjust" (66). This idea exemplifies not merely the state of nature, but a distinct feature of human nature as well, as it is ultimately the pursuit of survival that compels an individual to act in a given way. We are all slaves to our survival needs and our appetites. For G.W.F. Hegel, a theory of freedom underpins his thinking and betrays the Hobbesian conception of human nature. According to Hegel, human beings have an essential right qua human beings, and that right is to be free (Weiss 253). The basis of right is mind, and its origin is the will, and the "will is free, so that freedom is both the substance of right and its goalà" (Hegel 266). Neither Hobbes nor Hegel present ideas that are above criticism, and it is often in Hobbes that we may find reason to dismiss Hegel, and in Hegel that we may find cause to reject Hobbes.
In Hobbes, what is immediately clear about the state of nature is that virtues and vices are actually contingent luxuries, qualities that obtain for "men in society, not in solitude" (66). If this is the case, then humankind is no more naturally disposed to be just than to be unjust. After all, in the state of nature, force and fraud have become "the Cardinall vertues" (66). Survival in the state of nature is the primary objective, and thus, whatever behavior serves that end will be justifiable. As such, survival is less a summum bonum, or ultimate good for humankind, than a defense against a summum malum: a life that is "nasty" and "brutish", and cut short by the violent hands of our fellow men (64). To a Hegelian proponent of the free will, a Hobbesian critic would surely question the ability of an individual to enjoy any independent freedom in a world in which we are all subject to the same laws of nature, laws that comman...