Rousseau famously said, "People are born free, but they are everywhere in chains." In the social state, due to the protection of everyone's interests and the restriction of social morality, people will lose their natural freedom. However, people should be free. People sign contracts for freedom and a better life to form a country. Therefore, a good society should help everyone to recover themselves and realize the freedom of nature, instead of returning to the state of nature.

Rousseau said in the theory of social contract:

Under Hobbes' theory of natural state, people would rather accept an "authoritarian" country in order to escape from the bad natural state.

Locke's natural state is different.

Locke believes that in the natural state, people can decide their behavior and dispose of their property and person "within the scope of natural law" in the way they think fit. In other words, under Locke's natural law, people are bound by natural law. So Locke's natural state is not a "laissez-faire state".

Locke said:

So we can find that Locke's natural state is relatively peaceful, and it is by no means a "state of war". There is a difference between the two. However, this does not mean that people cannot enter a state of war in this state.

"Since everyone is equal and independent, no one can infringe on the life, health, freedom or property of others."

In other words, people have property rights to their own bodies, and the bodies belong to them. Then, when a person mixes his own labor with something, he enjoys the private property right to it. Therefore, it can be expected that some disputes will still occur in this case, and there is no country in the natural state. How to solve this contradiction? Can only resort to war.

Locke believes that the purpose of the people's government at home is to protect their "life, freedom and wealth", but at the same time, because "people are born free, equal but independent", the establishment of the government thinks that it is restricted by political rights, so the establishment of the government must get my consent.

When people enter the political society from the natural state, they give up the freedom in some natural forms, that is, the freedom to "do whatever he thinks fit to protect themselves and others within the scope permitted by natural law"; In addition, people have completely given up the right of individuals to punish those who violate natural laws.

Therefore, the government has formulated "clear, prescribed and well-known laws" and implemented them. Locke believes that "all this is just for people's peace, security and public welfare."

The above three social contracts all describe human society in a natural state, and Hobbes' natural state is similar to the dark forest theory in Three-body. The universe is like an endless dark forest, and every civilization is a hunter with a gun. Because it is impossible to predict each other's good and evil, to be on the safe side, being discovered means extinction, and the first choice to find others is extinction.

The horror of the dark forest is even worse, but let's imagine that every terrestrial planet in the universe has the same probability of life, and even the development of science and technology is similar, and it may be evenly matched after meeting. Will the two civilizations reach peace in the process of constant game? Even more civilizations are combined into cosmic civilization.

Of course, there is another one in "Three-body": the suspect chain. The two ends of the chain of suspicion are in a reciprocal relationship, that is, when two civilizations meet, the closer the strength of both sides is, the more likely it is to produce a chain of suspicion. When the strength of the two sides is qualitatively different, the chain of doubt cannot be generated.

So when two civilizations are not equal, can peace still be produced? It seems impossible, because the loser is either free or destroyed, or destroyed when he is free.

The problem is that no matter what the natural state of human beings is, we have successfully signed a social contract, which constitutes a society and a country. So I believe that even in the natural state, the cosmic civilization can make a contract, which we can call "the cosmic contract".

September 20 16 2 1

This article refers to Zhihu:

1./question/3 169 1393/answer/65729278

2./question/20064068