This chapter and the next juxtapose natural law philosophy, the Scottish Enlightenment, German Idealism, and counterrevolutionary texts of the 1790s, together with the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the most crucial political theorist for British Romantic writers who, by responding intensely to his works, also engage with the preceding century of political thought. The common ground among these otherwise varied ideologies is the new understanding that society begins with individuals in a state of nature, who form agreements to serve their private interests. The challenge of this theory of sociability is achieving cohesion among individuals, whose relationship is no longer understood as one of totality or potential harmony, and is fundamentally conflictual. In imagining sociability, political theorists identify motives for commonality that include self-interest, competition, fear and sentiment – feelings with an arbitrary basis. In contrast to the former Aristotelian idea that individuals are born into a pre-existent system, this tentative justification of commonality represents a crisis in political theory uniting an otherwise diverse range of intellectual contexts.

Following the works of Hugo Grotius and drawing on scientific methodology that undercuts traditional scholasticism, Thomas Hobbes was the first major thinker to question Aristotle's view of human nature as naturally sociable, and to consider sociability as an artificial construct devoid of a significant physiological foundation. Hobbes rejects Aristotle's dictum that ‘man is an animal born fit for Society’ and therefore for a predetermined social station (Hobbes 1998: 21–2). His memorable account of the state of nature as ‘a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man … And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ is often read as an account of human belligerence (Hobbes 2003: 102). I take the view that Hobbes's description of human nature in its natural state characterises it as not actively warlike, but rather inadequately sociable. According to Hobbes, people do have an innate desire for interaction; what they lack is the aptitude for acting on this desire in a peaceful manner. Hobbes emphasises that humans are not naturally self-sufficient, and cannot meet their needs without the assistance of others: ‘infants need the help of others to live, and adults to live well. I am not therefore denying that we seek each other's company at the prompting of nature’ (Hobbes 1998: 24).