From: Al Moritz <albert.moritz-at-utoronto.ca>

 

The phrase comes from Thomas Hobbes's De Cive, a Latin treatise

published 1642, and a forerunner of The Leviathan (1651). In De Cive,

Hobbes has "bellum omnium contra omnes", the war of all against all. In

The Leviathan, he translates this as a "war" of "every man against every

man". How it got changed into "the war of all against all", I don't

know, but that's the proverbial form it took. So it originates in

Hobbes's Latin, but as an "old saw", it originates in English. The

French "lutte", "struggle", is a somewhat free translation given that

French of course has a word for "war", and it sounds to me as if "lutte"

is used to assimilate the quotation to the later (nineteenth-century)

notion of class "struggle".

 

Al Moritz

 

——-Original Message——-
From: Recherches sur l'anarchisme
Sent: February-11-10 1:41 PM
To: RA-LFR
Subject: [liste ra-l] "lutte de tous contre tous"

 

De Ronald Creagh : ronald.creagh-at-univ-montp3.fr

 

Bonjour,

 

    Je cherche l'origine de l'expression "la lutte de tous contre tous".

Est-ce qu'elle date de l'apparition du "darwinisme social" - "struggle

for life" (lutte pour la vie), ou bien y a-t-il des sources plus anciennes?

 

Merci

 

Ronald Creagh

 

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