', a Latin phrase meaning "the war of all against all", is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). The common modern English usage is a war of "each against all'" where war is rare and terms such as "competition" or "struggle" are more common.[3]
In Leviathan itself,[4] Hobbes speaks of 'warre of every one against every one',[5] of 'a war [...] of every man against every man'[6] and of 'a perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour',[7] but the Latin phrase occurs in De Cive:
Later on, two slightly modified versions are presented in De Cive:
In chapter XIII of Leviathan,[8] Hobbes explains the concept with these words:
The thought experiment places people in a pre-social condition, and theorizes what would happen in such a condition. According to Hobbes, the outcome is that people choose to enter a social contract, giving up some of their liberties in order to enjoy peace. This thought experiment is a test for the legitimation of a state in fulfilling its role as "sovereign" to guarantee social order, and for comparing different types of states on that basis.
Hobbes distinguishes between war and battle: war does not only consist of actual battle; it points to the situation in which one knows there is a 'Will to contend by Battle'.[9]
In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Thomas Jefferson uses the phrase ("war of all things against all things", assuming is intended to be neuter like ) as he laments that the constitution of that state was twice at risk of being sacrificed to the nomination of a dictator after the manner of the Roman Republic.[10]
The phrase was sometimes used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:
Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of .[11]
One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation this war of all against all produces a general negation.[12]
It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers, among the beasts and plants, the society of England with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, 'inventions' and Malthusian 'struggle for existence'. It is Hobbes' .[14]
The whole Darwinists teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes's doctrine of and of the bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus's theory of population. When this conjurer's trick has been performed..., the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved.[15]
Insofar as the individual wants to preserve himself against other individuals, in a natural state of affairs he employs the intellect mostly for simulation alone. But because man, out of need and boredom, wants to exist socially, herd-fashion, he requires a peace pact and he endeavors to banish at least the very crudest from his world.[16]