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To Cooperate or Not to Cooperate
Hobbes and Aristotle on the Foundations of Cooperation
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Two hunters cross paths in the snow, tracking the same deer. They spot each other through bare trees, wisps of steam rising from their breath in the winter air. Each knows what is at stake — past sundown the temperature will plummet below zero, and they need meat to survive the week ahead.
Both men stand armed, burdened with heavy packs and dwindling provisions. Working together would ease their hunt, promising better odds of success. But doing so means turning your back on a stranger who might decide a whole deer is worth more than your life and stealing not only the quarry but also your supplies and weapons.
Thus emerges a dilemma as profound as Hamlet’s: to cooperate or not to cooperate. Thomas Hobbes, writing amid the tumult of the English Civil War, provides us a thought-provoking framework in his masterwork Leviathan. He begins by imagining what life would be like in what he coins the state of nature, a hypothetical condition devoid of government, laws, or authority.
Given that humans are equally skilled and determined, “nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body and mind” (Leviathan XIII.1), no one can claim…
