state of nature

The lack of a politically organized society. • The term is a fictional construct for the period in human history predating any type of political society.

state of nature. The lack of a politically organized society. • The term is a fictional construct for the period in human history predating any type of political society. “[W]e may make use of the contrast, familiar to the philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between the civil state and the state of nature.