Hobbesian anatomy of human rationality

Abstract

The aim of the article is to use the perspective of classical psychoanalysis to show the coherence of the Hobbesian theory of socialization. The main points of this theory, the the state of nature, the law of nature, and the social covenant will be highlighted from the perspective of the complex relationship between urge and public reason. This will allow to show the process of socialization as political disclosure and the mastering of innate, unchangeable, individual, egoistic urges. At the same time, Freudian science on the recognition of pathological conflicts and their conversion to normal conflicts will be used to analyze the state of nature as a politically pathological conflict and the social covenant as a political tool for constituting a normal conflict, which is an impulse for the social dynamics of reciprocity.