Bellum omnium contra omnes

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lang}} appears for the first time.<ref>See on Google Books.</ref> Taken from the revised edition printed in 1647 at Amsterdam (apud L. Elzevirium).<ref>See on Google Books.</ref>

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, a Latin phrase meaning "the war of all against all", is the description that Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state-of-nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). The common modern English usage is a war of "each against all" where war is rare and terms such as "competition" or "struggle" are more common.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Thomas Hobbes' use

In Leviathan itself,<ref name=Lv >Template:Cite bookTemplate:Dead link</ref> Hobbes speaks of 'warre of every one against every one',<ref>Chapter 14.</ref> of 'a war [...] of every man against every man'<ref>Chapters 13-14.</ref> and of 'a perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour',<ref name=Lv /><ref>Chapter 24.</ref> but the Latin phrase occurs in De Cive: Template:Quote

Later on, two slightly modified versions are presented in De Cive: Template:Quote

In chapter XIII of Leviathan,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Hobbes explains the concept with these words: Template:Quote

The thought experiment places people in a pre-social condition, and theorizes what would happen in such a condition. According to Hobbes, the outcome is that people choose to enter a social contract, giving up some of their liberties in order to enjoy peace. This thought experiment is a test for the legitimation of a state in fulfilling its role as "sovereign" to guarantee social order, and for comparing different types of states on that basis.

Hobbes distinguishes between war and battle: war does not only consist of actual battle; it points to the situation in which one knows there is a 'Will to contend by Battle'.<ref>Ibid.</ref>

Later uses

In his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Thomas Jefferson uses the phrase Template:Langx ("war of all things against all things", assuming Template:Langx is intended to be neuter like Template:Langx) as he laments that the constitution of that state was twice at risk of being sacrificed to the nomination of a dictator after the manner of the Roman Republic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The phrase was sometimes used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:

• In On the Jewish Question (1843–1844):

• In Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (1857–1858):

The English translation eliminates the Latin phrase used in the original German.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• In a letter from Marx to Engels (18 June 1862):

• In a letter to Pyotr Lavrov (London, 12–17 November 1875), Engels is expressed clearly against any attempt to legitimize the trend anthropomorphizing human nature to the distorted view of natural selection:

• It was also used by Friedrich Nietzsche in On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense (1873):

• Max Stirner also used the term in his book "The One and his own".
• Rudolf Steiner describes it with the term "war of all against all" a future epoch, when the human race will be submitted to a powerful selfishness.Template:Cn

See also

• Anomie
• Failed state
• Homo homini lupus
• List of Latin phrases
• Rat race
• Social contract theories
• State of nature