Arts and Humanities Commons^™

This article is a spin-off of my book project (with Grant McCall), "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." This article makes the following points. Most justifications of government using social contact theory (contractarianism) require a claim we call, “the Hobbesian hypothesis,” which we define as the claim that all people are better off under state authority than they would be outside of it. The Hobbesian hypothesis is an empirical claim about all stateless societies. Many small-scale societies are stateless. Anthropological evidence from the smallest-scale human societies provides sufficient reason to doubt the truth of the hypothesis, if not to reject …

This paper is a very early and very preliminary report of some of the findings from the research project, "Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy." The project will lead to at least one book, perhaps two. The basic argument of the project is that influential, modern political theories often rely on dubious claims about prehistory. It examines the political philosophy literature to show how these claims are used as essential premises in influential arguments. It then examines evidence from anthropology, archaeology, and history to show that these claims are dubious. This paper previews many of the findings from the book.