SELFISHNESS (3-13-12)

I was reading some of Thomas Hobbes' work and I noticed how pessimistic he was towards humanity. What I was reading specifically about was the necessity of government and why it is legitimate. Hobbes has the reader imagine a world without any form of government, or as he likes to call it, us in the "state of nature." According to him, humas are selfish by nature, so in the state of nature we'd also be in a state of war. We would be in a world where everyone's selfishness would take over in order to survive and we would be in war with ourselves. This is how Hobbes justifies the existence of government.