Definition of "state of nature" [state of nature]

• A wild primitive state untouched by civilization (noun)

WordNet. Princeton University. 2010.

• "In so far he differs from the theorizers and utopians of his day and of a later age, who had no hesitation in drafting laws for man in the abstract or for a humanity freed from all spatial and temporal determinations, and who took as the basis of their deductions either the idea of a social contract in primitive times, or of a state of nature which had to be developed or restored."
• "Nozick's minimal state, or "state-like entity" as he sometimes calls it, is a kind of protection agency to which people in the state of nature pay a fee for protection from assault, robbery, and so on."
• "They consist of a rich, marly loam, and, when in a state of nature were clothed to their summits with the wild cane, dense and unusually large, a forest of magnolia, black walnut, immense oaks, and tulip or poplar-trees, with gigantic vines of the wild grape climbing and overtopping the tallest of these forest monarchs."