All three thinkers saw human beings in the state of nature as isolated individuals, for whom society was not natural. According to Hobbes, early human beings relate to one another primarily through fear, envy, and conflict. Rousseau’s primitive human is even more isolated: while sex is natural, the family is not. Mutual human dependence comes about almost accidentally, as a result of technological innovations like agriculture that require greater cooperation. For both, human society emerges only with the passage of historical time, and involves compromises of natural liberty.
