Source: Persuasion
by Francis Fukuyama
“Hobbes is rightly understood to be one of the founders of modern liberalism, even though his Leviathan was hardly what we would today describe as a liberal state. Most of the big political controversies of subsequent centuries revolved around alternative understandings of human nature, and therefore of the kinds of political systems that needed to be derived from them. For example, John Locke, who exercised enormous influence over the American Founding Fathers, had a softer view of human nature that encompassed a natural proclivity to acquire property, and to make it more productive. Private property emerged when human labor was combined with the ‘almost worthless things of nature,’ and became the basis for market exchange and thus economic growth. Jean-Jacques Rousseau disagreed explicitly with Hobbes, arguing that ‘natural man’ was not violent or greedy, but rather a timid, solitary creature who had within himself the capacity for happiness.” (08/13/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/bringing-human-nature-back-in