In Statu Naturae: A Case Study of Civil Unrest in Seattle

Abstract

This paper analyzes civil unrest in Seattle during the summer of 2020 under a Hobbesian framework. Specifically, it seeks to assess whether protestors in the Capitol Hill Organized Protest were living under the state of nature as described in Hobbes’ Leviathan. First the paper looks at what the modern and classical interpretations of the state of nature look like. This section includes commentary from scholars as well as looks into the origins of this theory with an examination of Thucydides’ A History of the Peloponnesian War. This section seeks to display the state of nature as the state of fear. After assessing the components of the state of nature and the consequences of such a state, the paper moves into a look at the state of affairs in the CHOP. Relying on firsthand accounts, the last section analyzes the factors in play in regard to governmental structures and the state of fear. The paper concludes that the state of nature, while referred to as the state of war, does not necessarily require war, rather fear of war to exist. Furthermore, it opines that the CHOP certainly lay nest to a pervasive state of fear and the absence of authority. Because of this, the analysis demonstrates that the state of nature effect was, in fact, present in the CHOP.