The role of education in the formation of human sociability. Critical comparison of Th. Hobbes’ and J.-J. Rousseau’s approach

Aim: The paper aims at highlighting the philosophical roots of the relation between nature and education in the process of socialisation. Method: For the purpose of the research critical philosophical analysis and comparison of Thomas Hobbes’ and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s texts have been used. Concept: The rst part of the paper clari es the concept of nature and explains changes in the understanding of this concept through the history of philosophy, with special emphasis on transformation that happened in transition from the medieval to the modern period. Since both Hobbes and Rousseau are representatives of modern philosophy, the second section of the paper shows how the modern concept of nature manifests itself in the works of the two philosophers and compares, in a more detailed way, their understanding of human nature or natural state of mankind, focusing on the comparison of their concepts of human natural unsociability. The third part examines more closely the role of education in the transformation of human individuals into social beings. Results: Research shows that, for the two philosophers, the role of education in the process of socialisation consists of denaturalisation of human beings. Conclusion: Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s ideas of the relation of education and nature in the process of socialisation constitute a basis for justi cation of manipulations of education for political ends. To avoid such manipulations and nd the adequate concept of education, the paper suggests searching for an adequate concept of human nature rst.


Introduction
E ducation unquestionably plays a crucial role in socialisation of an individual. Through education the human being develops his communication skills, empathy, sense of community and teamwork, etc. However, it seems that nowadays the exact role of education in this process of socialisation is not perfectly clear. To be more precise, it seems that there is some confusion regarding the relationship issue between nature and education in the process of socialisation. Is education something that should help human nature to develop in a direction of its own intrinsically traced social goals or is education something that should change nature in order to generate a social existence of a human being? This paper attempts to offer the philosophical basis for answers to these questions by critically analysing the role of education in formation of human sociability in the works of two modern philosophers -Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The most common conclusion resulting from the comparison of these two philosophers can be reduced to a statement that they have two diametrically opposed conceptions of the human nature: one, according to which a human being is intrinsically evil, and the other, according to which a human being is intrinsically good. However, we should be very careful in avoiding any supercial judgement. Even though Rousseau sometimes speaks of human natural goodness, this is not a moral goodness in a proper sense of the word, because, according to this philosopher, a human being by his nature does not make moral distinctions between good and evil. These distinctions arise from the relationships which form an organised society (Rousseau, 2002b). On the other hand, Hobbes explicitly rejects the concept of a human being as naturally evil. The English philosopher thinks that one cannot talk about moral distinctions before the act of a social contract and constitution of commonwealth (Hobbes, 2005a;Hobbes, 2007). This is not to say that there are no signi cant differences between the two philosophers or that they should be ignored. However, this paper highlights one common feature in their understanding of human nature -the unsociability. This feature implies a deeper anthropological ground common to these two philosophers, which consists of a speci c understanding of human nature, which originates in a speci c concept of nature in general. Since the concept of nature has signi cantly changed in its meaning from antique to modern philosophy, rst some clari cations concerning these changes will be brought forward, with the focus on the transformation that happened in the transition from the medieval to the modern period. This way it will be possible to understand what lies at the roots of Hobbes' and Rousseau's understanding of human nature and later on discuss why this nature for both of them is unsocial. Lastly, we will see how education, according to these two philosophers, helps naturally unsocial and non-political human being to become a social being and a part of a body politic.

Transformations in the understanding of 'nature'
The English word 'nature' comes from the Latin natura, which is a translation of a Greek word . It has several different meanings, which should be precisely distinguished in order to avoid any conceptual confusion. In one sense, nature is the physical world taken "collectively, including plants, ani-mals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth" (Lexico, n.d., "Nature"). This meaning of 'nature' is of secondary importance to this research and that is why we will turn to its other meanings now, which will be analysed in a more detailed way.
As the prime source for this analysis, Aristotle's Metaphysics will be used. In chapter ve of the Book , he distinguishes six different meanings of . The rst one -the etymologic meaning of nature -is "the genesis of growing things" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). Thomas Aquinas (n. d. a) refers to some other unnamed text and states that it would be better to say that nature here denotes genesis "of things that are born " (Book V). As the argument for this statement he indicates that only living beings are said to be born and the "generation of non-living things cannot be called nature, properly speaking" (Book V). Hence, according to the etymology, nature signi es "that which a thing is at birth," or, in a broader sense, "that which is primitive and original" (The Catholic Encyclopedia, n. d., "Nature"). If one should speak of human nature in this sense, one should say, for example, that it is natural for a human being to be naked because he does not have any clothes by nature, but by the invention of art (Thomas Aquinas, n. d. c, I-II, q. 94, a. 5, ad 3). In other words, what is natural in this sense "is that which actually existed before all developments due to the intelligence" (Maritain, 1928, p. 58).
The second sense of nature, induced by Aristotle in his Metaphysics refers to "that immanent part of growing thing, from which its growth proceeds" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). As Thomas explains (n. d. a), this meaning comes from the rst meaning of nature -genesis or birth of living thingsand denotes the immanent principle of generation or "that from which as from an intrinsic principle something born is rst generated" (Book V). From this second meaning arises also the third meaning of nature or "the source from which the primary movement in each natural object is present in it in virtue of its own essence" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). According to Thomas, this meaning results from the similitude between generation and other kinds of motion. And because some philosophers thought that this principle of movement in natural things is the matter, Aristotle induces the fourth meaning of nature (Thomas Aquinas, n. d. a) in the sense of "the primary matter of which any natural object consists" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). By contrast, other philosophers considered this principle a form and thus the fth meaning of nature -"the essence of natural objects" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). In a broader sense, nature denotes "every essence in general" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). As for Aristotle himself, it is clear that "nature in the primary and strict sense is the essence of things which have in themselves, as such, a source of movement" (Aristotle, n. d., Book V, part 4). This is how we arrived at the strictly metaphysical meaning of nature, which is inseparable from its teleological content because this movement is directed towards a speci c goal of a being. Thomas Aquinas expresses this directly saying that nature is "the essence of a real thing according as it has an ordering to the thing's proper operation" (Thomas Aquinas, n. d. b, c. 1). Thus, we may conclude that in this sense natural is "that which answers the requirements and propensities of the essence" (Maritain, 1928, p. 58). This view dominated through antique and the medieval philosophy, which was, to a greater extent, marked by the teleological worldview.
However, the development and growing in uence of nominalism from the late Middle Ages, together with the development of the natural sciences, gradually resulted in the replacement of the teleological worldview by the mechanistic one. Nominalism and mechanicism in the Modern Age have their representative par excellence precisely in Thomas Hobbes, for whom "there is nothing universal but names" (Hobbes, 2005d, p. 22) and who reduces four well known Aristotelian causes to two: the ef cient and the material, leaving form and telos aside (Hobbes, 2005c). It is clear that rejection of the teleological worldview results also in the rejection of the teleological conception of nature. Thus, while the traditional concept of ènteléheia "overcomes the ambiguity of the concept of nature understood as the beginning and as something that includes something different from itself, as telos" (Spaemann, 2009, p. 84), modern understanding of nature will simply be reduced to nature in its etymological sense: the primitive or original state. When it comes to a human being, the question about his nature will then become the question about some primitive state of the human race, which will for that reason be called the natural state of mankind. Thus, our next task will be to enquire what, according to Hobbes and Rousseau, that natural state of mankind is like, and particularly, what it is like in regard to human sociability or, to be more precise, human unsociability.

Human unsociability in a natural state
It is a well-known Aristotelian thesis that a human being is "by nature a political animal" (Aristotle, 1995a(Aristotle, , p. 1987. That means that a body politic is a work of nature and that an individual who would live without it would not live a truly human life. It is interesting to note, though, that in his Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle adds that the human being "is not merely a political but also a household-maintaining animal" (Aristotle, 1995b(Aristotle, , p. 1968). Thus, Aristotle was aware that a human being is oriented towards creating permanent relationships with other people not only in a body politic, but in a family as well, and that only living in a community with other human beings he achieves the ful llment of his human nature. Medieval philosophers, in uenced by the antique philosophy, but also inspired by the Christian revelation, shared this attitude. They noticed that a concrete human being never confronts the world as an isolated individual, devoid of every domestic, social or political determination; but just the opposite, he confronts it always "as a member of this family, this household, this clan, this tribe, this city, this nation, this kingdom" (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 172). Thus, according to this view, human nature "constitutes the ontological ground for society" (Messner, 2003). This is manifested through biological, psychological, and teleological tendencies of human nature. These tendencies direct human beings towards marriage and family, but also toward broader social groups and political order, which should provide conditions for the achievement of a truly human existence (Messner, 2003). Consequently, medieval as well as antique thinkers, considered family and state to be natural but also necessary forms of human life. Certainly, this is not to say that those thinkers presupposed that human beings lived in an ordered state from the very outset of their history, but that only in a "free community of citizens, based on division of work, emerges what was xed in human being as a capacity and potentiality for happiness" (Spaemann, 2009, p. 111). Though some may object that it is impossible to speak of the "free community of citizens" in ancient times because of the institution of slavery, we must remember, though, that to Aristotle polis truly was a community of free citizens. A political rule was over those subjects who were by nature free and as such, different from the rule over those who were slaves by nature and were not citizens at all. We may raise serious objections against Aristotle's approval of the institution of slavery, but these objections must be directed towards his wrong presupposition that slaves by their nature belonged to other people as a living property, which meant that by their nature they were not political beings and could not be free citizens themselves, but not against his thesis that a polis was a community of free citizens.
Contemporary man is, though, frequently at odds with this antique and medieval widespread attitude regarding the ful llment of human nature within a family and a political community. It seems that nowadays a lot more popular opinion is that family relationships and political order restrict our natural freedom by imposed norms and thereby hinder our self-ful lment.
How and when did this transformation concerning human sociability happen? The answer is: in the transition from medieval to the modern understanding of the human being and the world in general. Transformations in the understanding of human sociability followed the above-mentioned transformations in understanding of nature. Since the conception of a man as a social being by his nature was grounded on the teleological understanding of nature, the rejection of the teleological understanding of nature and reduction of human nature to some primitive state of mankind would result in rejection of sociability as a human natural feature. Among central protagonists of this new conception of the human being and society are de nitely Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
According to the English philosopher, the human being is not "born t for society" and thus "is made t for society not by nature" (Hobbes, 2005a, p. 2), and in Rousseau's opinion, "solitary way of life [was] prescribed to us by nature" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 93). Therefore, for both of them the natural state of mankind is an unsocial state. Still, we must note that these two philosophers' different visions of the natural state include different interpretations of human unsociability in that state. Although both of them assume that self-preservation is a basic natural goal of a human being (Hobbes, 2010;Rousseau, 2003), Hobbes concludes that a natural state of mankind is characterised by an ultimate misery because human life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 113) and in constant danger of a violent death. On the other hand, Rousseau conceives this original state of mankind as a carefree and undisturbed state, and he wonders "what kind of misery can be that of a free being, whose heart enjoys perfect peace, and body perfect health?" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 104). Thus, though starting from the same premise about the basic natural instinct of human beings, Hobbes and Rousseau came to different, and even opposite conclusions about the natural state of mankind: for the English philosopher it is a state of constant war, and for the Genevan philosopher it is a state which "is the most favourable to peace, and the most suitable to mankind" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 105).
What is the cause of such different conclusions? According to the author of this paper, the answer lies in the fact that Hobbesian man, besides his natural tendency towards self-preservation, has another natural tendency -a tendency towards power. This thesis could be further elaborated. According to the English philosopher, the tendency towards power is so preeminent in human beings that it affects the formation of their intellect more than any other factor and is also an essential part of human happiness. In his opinion, happiness is not some peace of mind that follows the complete ful llment of the deepest human desire. Such happiness for Hobbes simply does not exist and his opinion on the matter is quite the contrary. According to Hobbes, happiness is "a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another" (2007, p. 86). This desire is actually "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceased only in death" (Hobbes, 2007, pp. 85-86). However, power is a relative category; it exists only in comparison and if a power of one man is the same as the power of another, then it would not be power at all, because their powers would be "mutually annulled" (Hobbes, 1976, p. 466). So, if a man wants to have power, he has to have more power than others, which is why some kind of competition is inevitable. What is more, for the English philosopher the whole human life is compared to a race whose only goal is to be ahead and to stay in the race -that is, to stay alive and to have more power than others and to continually increase that power (Hobbes, 2005d). Competition, as a necessary consequence of a tendency toward ever greater power, is one of the main causes of war in the natural state. The other two -also stemming from human nature -are dif dence and glory (Hobbes, 2007). By glory, Hobbes understands "the passion which proceedeth from the imagination of our own power above the power of him that contendeth with us" (Hobbes, 2005d, p. 40), so we may conclude that tendency towards power emerges as a crucial cause of war in a natural state. This is also evident from Hobbes' comparison of human beings with such animals as bees and ants, which he considers to be sociable by their nature. The English philosopher induces six differences between people and these animals, which can, in essence, be reduced to this: social animals do not know the characteristically human comparison and competition which, sooner or later, lead to con ict (Hobbes, 2007). Hence, the basic causes of human unsociability in a natural state are man's speci c abilities and desires. What makes him different from other animals is what hinders him from living in harmony with other members of his species. Instead, his relations with other people in the natural state -relations of competition and con ict -are destructive for him and mankind in general.
Rousseau does not deny that competition and desire for power are specically human features. He even imagines, like Hobbes, that a condition characterised by con ict growing from competition precedes the act of constitution of the political state: "(…) competition and rivalry on the one hand, and an opposition of interests on the other, and always a secret desire of pro ting at the expense of others" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 123) yield together to "the most horrible state of war" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 124) in which mankind is entangled before making the social contract. However, unlike Hobbes, Rousseau does not regard this condition as an original, truly natural state of mankind. Moreover, he regards it as a degradation of that state. According to the Genevan philosopher, the life of a human being in a natural state looks completely different: "(…) savage man, wandering about in the forests, without industry, without speech, without any xed residence, an equal stranger to war and every social tie, without any need of his fellows, as well as without any desire of hurting them, and perhaps even without ever distinguishing them individually one from the other, subject to few passions, and nding in himself all he wants, (…) had no knowledge or feelings but such as were proper to that situation" (Rousseau, 2002b, pp. 110 -111) Hence, original unsociability of a Rousseau's savage man consists in his solitary life, which was "prescribed to us by nature" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 93). Savage man nds in himself everything that he wants. If he meets other people, it is only occasional and for a brief moment. For this reason, his life in a natural state is peaceful and undisturbed. How is, then, possible that this idyllic state becomes "the most horrible state of war"?
The reason lies precisely in making his contacts with other people more frequent and more intense. As interpersonal relations become more complex, people start to organise their social life. Thus, differently from Hobbes, who holds that before the institution of a commonwealth "there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society (…)" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 113), Rousseau imagines an appearance of an organised society before the institution of a body politic. It is a society with private property, based on the division of labour, where agriculture and metallurgy are the main industries. Besides labour, people of this society have also come to know the appeal of leisure and amusement and started to make moral judgments. This includes a full development of human potentialities but also the emergence of some new desires, like the desire to be noticed and esteemed by others, which leads to competition. Thus, competition is a phenomenon not known in the original state. Therefore, it is not a basic feature of a natural condition of mankind as it was in Hobbes, Ethics for whom organised society is born together with the body politic. For Rousseau competition is a characteristic of a social state and a clear indication of the detachment from the natural state and of the degeneracy of mankind which will end up in a state of war (Rousseau, 2002b). This is the reason why Rousseau criticises Hobbes' view of the natural state, saying that he did not make a full abstraction of human being from all his social inheritance (Rousseau, 2002b).
Rousseau did, certainly, make this abstraction more radical and -if we keep in mind that typically modern understanding of nature in the sense of "that which a thing is at birth" -we may also say that he thought of the natural state of mankind in a much more consistent way than Hobbes did. This will become clear as soon as we explore what a human being is at his birth according to these two philosophers. For Hobbes, a human being is born with nothing more than his senses and few basic appetites, like that of food, excretion, and exoneration. Hence, nothing speci cally human was given to him by nature (Hobbes, 2007). Nevertheless, these same faculties may be improved "by study and industry (…) to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 16). As we can see, in contrast to antique and medieval philosophers, a human being for Hobbes is not a rational being by his nature. And neither is he for Rousseau. He says that, "thinking is an art that is learned, as other arts are" (Rousseau, 2003, p. 301), unlike bodily constitution, which is "the work of nature" (Rousseau, 2002a, p. 217). It is interesting to note, though, that rationality in Rousseau's philosophy is not understood as a specic human feature in the sense of a faculty essentially different from the faculties of sensitive knowledge: "All animals have ideas, since all animals have senses; they even combine their ideas to a certain degree, and, in this respect, it is only the difference of such degree that constitutes the difference between man and beast" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 95). However, this degree which makes the difference between humans and brute animals can be achieved only with the use of language and the removal from the original state (Rousseau, 2002b). That is why Rousseau concludes that the "state of re ection is a state against nature, and (…) the man who meditates is a degenerate animal" (Rousseau, 2002b, p. 93). The Genevan philosopher even says that his imaginary pupil, Émile, is at the age of twelve, "hardly more than a physical being" and "knows no other human being save himself" (Rousseau, 2003, p. 167). Just like a savage man, who is an irrational being with no permanent social relations and who knows no difference between good and evil, so does Émile by the age of twelve still not know either for morality or society, just as he has not learnt how to think yet. Rousseau imagines his savage man as the one who lives his entire life in about the same condition in which Émile lives by the age of twelve, and that is as "a stupid, limited animal" (Rousseau, 2002a, p. 167).
If we keep in mind that modern concept of nature as of "that which a thing is at birth," it is clear that the Genevan philosopher had a much more consistent concept of natural state than the English one: the image of Rousseau's savage man in the natural state highly corresponds to his image of a child before the age of maturity. On the other hand, Hobbes' individual in a natural state is a mature man who has already developed all his characteristically human faculties. One of the reasons for perceiving a human being in a natural state in this way certainly lies in the fact that Hobbes actually employs two different meanings of "nature." Besides nature in the sense of the original state or of that which a thing is at birth, he also uses the other meaning of nature which is closer to nature in the sense of essence. It must be noted, though, that this is not the essence understood in the metaphysical sense -as it was in Aristotle, for instance -but an essence understood in a mere nominalist sense. Thus we read: "Man's nature is the sum of his natural faculties and powers, as the faculties of nutrition, motion, generation, sense, reason, etc. These powers we do unanimously call natural, and are contained in the de nition of man, under these words, animal, and rational." (Hobbes, 2005d, p. 2.) The result of this twofold understanding of human nature in Hobbes is that his understanding of the unsociability of a natural man, in the sense of his constant war against everyone else, is not so radically in line with the modern concept of nature as is Rousseau's understanding of human natural unsociability in the sense of a solitary life of a savage man. However, Rousseau's savage man, making his contacts with other people more frequent and more intense, enters into the state of a general war, too. Thus, even though these two philosophers differ in describing human unsociability in the natural state, inasmuch as one thinks that it consists of a solitary life, while other holds that it consists in a general war, they both agree that the condition which immediately precedes the institution of a body politic is destructive for the mankind. What is more, the body politic shows up as the only remedy for that condition: corrupted mankind can only be redeemed by the "mercy" of the divine Leviathan or the divine general will.

Transformation through education: acquired human sociability in a political state
The human condition signi cantly changes with the institution of a commonwealth. The human being in this condition establishes and cultivates harmonious, constructive and permanent relations with other people, which was impossible in the previous state. The question is: What makes this change possible? What enables humans to become social beings and to replace their hostile attitude by new cooperative relations? Both of the philosophers agree that the answer lies in education: "(…) man is made t for society not by nature, but by education," (Hobbes 2005a, p. 2) and "(…) public education, therefore, under regulations prescribed by the government, and under magistrates established by the Sovereign is one of the fundamental rules" (Rousseau, 1923, p. 269) of the government.
In spite of the above-cited Hobbes' quote about the role of education in the formation of human sociability, the importance of education may not be so obvious in Hobbes' general political philosophy. As we read in Hobbes' Ethics political works, people decide to get out of the natural condition prompted by natural laws, which suggest renouncing the natural right to all things and making a covenant as the best means for attaining and maintaining peace and self-preservation (Hobbes, 2007). English philosopher was well aware, though, that mere natural laws will not suf ce for the security of mankind. It will be necessary to "confer all their power and strength upon one man" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 157) and thus establish a sovereign power as the maximum power and a guarantee of peace. Therefore, no education seems to be necessary -all people need is to follow their calculative rationality and the body politic as the guarantee of peace will be established. However, it will be shown that a Hobbesian body politic can subsist only by means of education. To make that clear, we should rst remember that Hobbes presents in his works two different ways of attaining sovereign power and, accordingly, two geneses of the commonwealth: institution and acquisition. The above-mentioned commonwealth by the institution is only a logical model. As Sir L. Stephen observes, "the hypothesis that States were deliberately contrived and made by a bargain between the separate atoms is, of course, absurd historically (…)" (Stephen, 1961, pp. 209-210). Historically, sovereign powers and commonwealths must have originated in acquisitions, where less powerful individuals or groups conquered by those more powerful, were obliged to give obedience to their conquerors (Robertson, 1901). Considering Hobbes' view of human being, this is also the only consistent way of explaining the appearance of the body politic. How else could we explain that a being, who by his nature constantly struggles for ever greater power, agrees to subdue himself to another man, except that he has been overcome by the more powerful?
If this is the only possible way to acquire sovereign power, the only possible way to preserve it is -education. Power can keep others in obedience only until some other power overpowers it. That is why it is very important that subjects are well informed about their duties and about the rights of a sovereign as well as of punishments they could be af icted by in case of disobedience. This is the reason why universities have a central role in Hobbes' commonwealth. In the most faithful re ection of the natural condition of mankind -civil wars -that struck seventeenth-century England, Hobbes saw universities as "the core of rebellion" (Hobbes, 2008, p. 236) against the King, because from thence spread that dangerous Aristotelian political teaching which, according to English philosopher, justi ed rebellion and even murder of the lawful sovereign (Hobbes, 2007). In spite of that, Hobbes did not think universities should be dismissed or destroyed. On the contrary, he held that they ought "to be better disciplined" (Hobbes, 2008, p. 236) because "actions of men proceed from their opinions; and in the well-governing of opinions, consisteth the well-governing of men's actions" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 164). Thus, no lasting peace could be achieved unless universities "direct their studies (…) to the teaching of absolute obedience to the laws of King" (Hobbes, 2008, p. 233). Naturally, Hobbes did not think that every citizen would attend university lessons. He imagined universities more like centres from which favourable political doctrines should be channelled through gentry and clergy to common people (Hobbes, 2007).
However, teaching people about duties, rights, and punishments is not enough for the preservation of peace in body politics. Well-governing of opinions is impossible without the well-governing of passions because the intellect is nothing more than an instrumental faculty in service of passions. Its function consists in nding the most convenient means for the appeasement of a certain passion "for the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and nd the way to the things desired (…)" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 61). Passions are, therefore, the rst, interior movers of a man's operations (Hobbes, 2007). Consequently, in order to produce desirable operations, one must arouse adequate passions. And how can this be done? Since the difference in passions among men results partly from the difference in their physical constitution and partly from the difference in their education (Hobbes, 2007), it is clear that education is the only means that can in uence the formation of human passions. The passion which is in Hobbes' works particularly stressed as important for the preservation of body politic is fear. According to the English philosopher, "it is impossible" to maintain peace among subjects "without some mutual and common fear to rule them" (Hobbes, 2005b, pp. 119-120). Consequently, politically directed education should aim at intensifying subjects' fear of punishment. It is not enough to inform people about all possible punishments for all possible transgressions, but to inform them about those in such way as to stimulate their fear because this is what keeps people in obedience (Hobbes, 2005b). It seems that for Hobbes the best places for education of this politically favourable fear are pulpits. According to the English philosopher, religion is "fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind, or imagined from tales publicly allowed" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 45), and its purpose is to make people "more apt to obedience, laws, peace, charity and civil society" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 99). Cherishing this publicly allowed tales which stimulate fear, pulpits cherish the obedience of subjects and thus play an important role in preventing them from breaking laws and -what is most important -from rebellion against their sovereign, who is also, according to Hobbes, a supreme religious authority. Commonwealth could not survive if every subject had aspirations towards "the greatest of human powers" (Hobbes, 2007, p. 74) -the sovereign power. The struggle after ever greater power and competition resulting from it are the main reasons for the unsustainability of a natural state. So, the development of this human passion, namely, appetite for power, should be strongly restricted in a political state, because unlimited striving for power leads to the dissolution of the commonwealth. However, we must remember that this unlimited striving for power is precisely what human happiness consists of. That means that education for society and politics cannot be education for happiness. Some may object that entering body politic for Hobbes does not imply renouncement of happiness, because what is necessary for people to live in political order is only to limit their desire after power and not to dismiss it altogether. Still, we must keep in mind that happiness, according to Hobbes, is "a perpetual and restless desire of power after power" (Hobbes, 2007, pp. 85-86) or "continually to out-go the next before" (Hobbes, 2005d, p. 53) in the race of life. So, to limit this desire is already to inhibit human happiness, because human happiness consists exactly in an unlimited striving after power. Pursuing this specically human desire makes permanent social and political bounds impossible. Human nature as such tends to destroy itself (Hobbes, 2005b). That is why the task of education must be to suppress this speci cally human natural tendency and encourage only that which is directed to survival -a goal which is not speci cally human, but common to all living beings. This is the only way for a man to cease being a wolf to another man and to become for him -"a kind of God" (Hobbes, 2005a, p. ii).
In Rousseau's philosophy, this transformation of natural into the political existence of human beings by means of education is more obvious. The Genevan philosopher in a very explicit manner af rms that education should destroy nature and natural order and create a new political being and new political order. In a paragraph that is considered to be worthwhile passing on in full, he writes: "He who dares undertake to give institutions to a nation ought to feel himself capable, as it were, of changing human nature; of transforming every individual, who in himself is a complete and independent whole, into part of a greater whole, from which he receives in some manner his life and his being; of altering man's constitution in order to strengthen it; of substituting a social and moral existence for the independent and physical existence which we have all received from nature. In a word, it is necessary to deprive a man of his native powers in order to endow him with some which are alien to him, and of which he cannot make use without the aid of other people. The more thoroughly those natural powers are deadened and destroyed, the greater and more durable are the acquired powers, and the more solid and perfect also are the institutions; so that if every citizen is nothing, and can be nothing, except in combination with all the rest, and if the force acquired by the whole be equal or superior to the sum of the natural forces of all the individuals, we may say that legislation is at the highest point of perfection which it can attain" (Rousseau, 2002a, p. 181).
As this paragraph evidently shows, "the political existence", according to Rousseau, "'denaturalises' the human being" because it is "not traced and anticipated in a nature understood as entelechia" (Spaemann, 2009, p. 39). As a result, "a natural human cannot be a citizen" and "the citizen cannot be a human" (Spaemann, 2009, p. 111). Consequently, as Rousseau af rms, in education "we must choose between making a man and a citizen, for we can not make both at once" (Rousseau, 2003, p. 5).
Here is how human sociability becomes actually an alternative to nature. Hobbes and Rousseau, starting from the premise of a natural state as an unsocial state, came to a conclusion about the social and political state as an unnatural state (Spaemann, 2009). In such circumstances, the role of education is not to cherish the development of natural human faculties and guide a human being toward the goal which is already traced in his nature, and which he, as an individual, has to achieve in his own particular way, within the society and political community to which he belongs. The role of education is in the abatement of natural faculties and the development of those which will lead to politically favourable goals. This way a human being is completely absorbed in a citizen, and anthropology in politics.

Conclusion
This paper has attempted to shed some light on the relation between nature and education in the process of socialisation, using critical analysis of the philosophical works of T. Hobbes and J.-J. Rousseau as basis. For that purpose, rst it was necessary to clarify the concept of nature. As we have seen, this concept has been changing its meaning throughout the history of philosophy. The two philosophers rejected the teleological meaning of nature which dominated the antique and medieval philosophy and embraced that purely etymological meaning of nature in the sense of some primitive or original state of mankind, disregarding every purpose speci c for human species. The consequence of this was the attitude that every development due to higher human powersincluding organised society and political order -is something unnatural for human beings, something arti cial and acquired by education. The task of education in this perspective, therefore, was to denaturalise a human being in order to give him a higher -social and political existence.
One of the biggest problems with such theory is the fact that it constitutes the basis for justi cation of any kind of manipulation of education -and consequently, of human beings -for political ends. It is well known how various totalitarian systems use education to promulgate their ideology and infusing it into young generations. Strong state censorship, concealment, and distortion of the facts, together with the strong propaganda of leading ideas of their founders make their most reliable means for the maintenance of the stability of such political order. It might seem at rst glance that the only true alternative to this concept of education is the one offered by liberal individualism with its strong emphasis on freedom and self-determination of each individual. However, we must be very careful not to jump to conclusions. Liberal individualism is based on the same conception of human nature that is proposed by Hobbes and Rousseau: there is no nature in the sense of the essence, which is equal in all human beings, and, consequently, no telos understood as a common and ultimate goal of each member of the human species. For that reason, society cannot be understood as a mutual effort on the attainment of the common good. Rather, as A. MacIntyre very well noticed, in such circumstances each individual is like a "shipwrecked on an uninhabited island with a group of other individuals, each of whom is a stranger" (MacIntyre, 2007, p. 250) to everyone else. What is necessary for their survival and peaceful life is to work out some rules for the maximal protection of each one of them. However, as different individuals, they all have different strivings and different goals, and since there is no absolute measure to determine what stri-vings and what goals should have precedence over others, some compromise is required. In practise, this "compromise" means that those with more political in uence impose their model of regulating people's desires and goals upon others. Consequently, liberal-individualistic education is liberal only for some and authoritarian for others. Some may object to this thesis, saying that liberal individualism is based on objective and universal human rights. However, without a universal human nature, a concept of universal human rights loses its stronghold and becomes liable to different interpretations and manipulations, which is evident from constant strivings for the enlargement of the list of human rights.
To conclude, in order to avoid the above-mentioned manipulations and nd the adequate concept of education, we must search for the adequate concept of human nature. This paper suggests that such a concept can be found within the framework of traditional metaphysic. Only with the metaphysical concept of nature understood as essence directing a being towards its speci c operations and purposes, human nature and sociability may be reconciled and the use of education for political ends rejected. In such circumstances, the role of education would not be to destroy unsocial human nature and create new, arti cial social and political human existence, but to develop social potentialities, which are already traced in human nature, directing the human being towards the achievement of goals which are speci c to the human species and helping him to achieve these goals in his unique -personal manner.