Thomas Hobbes was the first political philosopher who radically put the individual in the center of his theory. Paralleling his mode of inquiry - abandoning all knowledge first, then reconstructing it piece by piece with a carefully examined vocabulary - he rejects the perception of human beings as in relation to others, as an Aristotelian "zoon politikon", and abstracts human beings to a common, shared essence.   But while the later philosophers thought of a Kantian rationality as a common essence, Hobbes argues that man perceives himself of equal ability in regard to others . It would then be unnatural to subdue himself to others, and to the contrary: man's "end", his goal is "principally" his "own conservation, and sometimes (his) delectation only" . It is inherent in the nature of man, Hobbes observes, that he is first competitive (which "maketh men invade for gain"), secondly diffident (makes him yearn for safety) and thirdly, he searches for glory.   The aim at gain, safety, and glory given, it is no wonder that man resorts, in search of these, to the use of violence, first, "to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children, and cattle"; secondly "to defend them"; thirdly, "for trifles".
The use of violence can logically be constructed  out of the observed condition of equality: "If any two men desire the same thing, which they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; (...) (they) endeavor to destroy, or subdue one another." So, the outcome of equality is "diffidence of one another", and diffidence leads to war. Why? Anticipating the danger of that others pose for his own conservation, man necessarily seeks "augmentation of dominion over men".  Hobbes way out of this situation of violence is to install the Leviathan, a "power able to over-awe them all" . That is the political consequence of man's violent nature.
The installment of a Leviathan, to be precise, is not really a way "out". The state of nature is an always present reality , precisely because it proceeds to be the logical conclusion of the observed nature of man, and can, as this natural state, not be escaped. Man is always man's wolf , "there is always war of every one against everyone." The war must not necessarily be battle, it is the atmosphere already in which everyone has the disposition to fight.  Since the desires and passions of man (Plato's appetites) are inherent to man's nature, they are "in themselves no sin". Neither is anything just or unjust, right or wrong in such a state of war. But when man's inclination for security, commodity and survival finally get the best of him, "reason suggesteth convenient articles of peace", and men agree to the "first and second natural laws", and to "contracts" that install a sovereign. These laws and ideas, again, necessarily follow from the nature of man, where the inclination to violence and reason is located. How the contract installs a covenant of mutual trust of which the according performance is compelled by an agreed to sovereign, and stops the violence, is a political solution to the problem of violence Hobbes spells out in chapter 14 and 15. He predicts that the Leviathan, when properly installed, will guarantee stability.
What a poor English "frog" Hobbes is to Nietzsche!  Hobbes could serve Nietzsche as a prime example of the traditional "ethic of ressentiment", the ethic that builds around the fear of others and that describes the other as a danger. But what does Nietzsche care about others! He develops an ethic of nobility, recreates morality the way it was once created long ago by the "noble, powerful, high-stationed, high-minded" (and "what had they to do with [Hobbes’, C.G.] utility!")  who felt a distance to the low and mean the way Nietzsche feels distant to his fellow men. Hobbes relies on the creation of the Leviathan to define good and evil and to impose morals. That, in Nietzsche's view, is the tradition of a fearful culture of the "camels", who have learned to bear and accept the traditional notions of morality because it gave them comfort and repose. Nietzsche relies upon himself for morals, only.
The rebellion Nietzsche feels inside him, indeed the violence of an ancient fire about that "sick" culture of ressentiment of the camels stems from his views on the genealogy of morals and the anthropological conception inherent in it. Throughout history and in the present, Nietzsche witnesses a fearful struggle between the opposing values of good an evil, between the sick and the healthy. In essence, the sick resent the healthy, and invent morals that despise the healthy.
Indeed, our whole culture today, says Nietzsche, is an expression of this ressentiment. All the laws, the whole Judeo-Christian tradition is a product of those who suffer and seek someone to blame for their suffering, and the priests who redirect the ressentiment towards the sick themselves. The healthy ones, the lucky hits, the "man who justify man" , have "a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs", and it is the weak ones who have invented the language, and with it the culture to make the "evil" healthy ones look bad. How much Nietzsche despises the mediocrity and regression of the sick that comes with this "reduction of the beast of prey 'man' to a tame and civilized animal, a domestic animal" .
But the untamed animal still lurks under the surface of modern man. Nietzsche predicts that the same men who are held in check "inter pares" and by the customs and traditions of the ethic of ressentiment, will themselves be "not much better than uncaged beasts of prey" given the situation that "they go outside, where the strange, the stranger is found".  They will then "compensate themselves in the wilderness for the tension engendered by protracted confinement and enclosure within the peace of society", and Nietzsche has no inclination to be apologetic about it: the splendid "blond beast" of prey, the lion "at the bottom of all these noble races"  needs prowling "about avidly in the search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness."  So far, "the diminution and leveling of European man constitutes our greatest danger, for the sight of him makes us weary", and "together with the fear of man we have also lost our love of him, our reverence to him, our hopes for him, even the will to him."
That is Nietzsche's analysis of the state of European societies, and it is not daring to say that it includes the prescription that if Europe is not to be lost to "nihilism", it needs the sight of untamed noble man.  I hesitate to call it a political prescription because Nietzsche talks not to his readers as to fellow man of power and science as Hobbes did, or to democrats in their child-phase like Tocqueville. His approach is a personal one, and his outlook for the stability of democracies of Europe bleak. He predicts a time of change.
While Nietzsche wished we would live in a somewhat modified state of nature that Hobbes took for granted - N. would have wanted it populated by nobility instead of tyrants with "English" self-interest -, he would have affirmed another political philosopher, namely Alexis de Tocqueville, in much of his analysis, for example, on the tampering effect of habits. But N.  would reject T.’s evaluation that these habits "(raise) mankind."  He would have said that they lower all mankind, and would not have welcomed the "doctrine of self-interest" the way T., sharing this analysis with Hobbes, did in the name of "orderly, temperate, moderate, careful, and self-controlled citizens". N. would have been disturbed by T.’s argument that the doctrine of self-interest may be best suited "to the wants of men", and "as their strongest remaining guarantee against themselves". The difference between T. and N. lies not in analysis but in the prescription that follows them, which may be explained by their different aims.
Tocqueville takes no great pain to lay out an anthropology. In his account of history, mankind has some "universal and permanent needs on which moral laws are based" . Men are shaped by these moral, social, and political institutions, conditions, traditions and practices that award honor, guilt or shame, praise or shame. The great tendency in history leads towards ever more equality , yet "however energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit."  "When each sees a million others around him all with the same or similar claims to be proud of, pride becomes exacting and jealous; it gets attached to wretched trifles and doggedly defends them."  While this reminds us of Hobbes' explanation of equality generating (thirdly) violence, democratic man does not engage in violent behavior. The reasons are this: "The ever-increasing number of men of property devoted to peace, the growth of personal property which war so readily devours, mildness of mores, gentleness of heart, that inclination to pity which equality inspires [again, we think of Nietzsche's equal observation, but despise of pity, C.G.], that cold and calculating spirit which leaves little room for sensitivity to the poetic and violent emotions of wartime - all these causes act together to damp down warlike fervor"  [N.: it exhausts man, C.G.]. In other words, Tocqueville turns to a sociological solution to violence within a society when he proposes it to be a "general and constant rule that among civilized nations warlike passions become rarer and less active as social conditions get nearer to equality."  But there is one place left in a democracy where the tendency of equality has no such strong power: the army. It maintains a hierarchical order, and to be promoted to a higher rank there becomes the chief goal of soldiers, indeed "the essence of existence". And in regard to society, it is a chance to escape from the common level and satisfy one's own pride, as the "standing in society almost always depends on (one's) rank in the army". It is a "claim to distinction"  from the common mass of people through military honors. So democratic soldiers ardently seek military honors which they can only obtain in battle - yet, the democratic nations have no great war-like ambitions. Not the "leading citizens but the least important" go to the army. It all becomes a vicious cycle when the elite doesn't value a military career very high, and doesn't honor the army because it is generally not honored by the elite. That wounds the democratic soldier's pride, the one who has hoped for battle and promotion, and he feels inferior and unhappy with his lot. They are men of little possession, so they can only win through war. And because the elite doesn't honor the army very high, the army is becomes an "little nation apart" of people with "a lower standard of in intelligence and rougher habits than the nation at large." Plus, they know how to handle arms and are not afraid to use them. Now, while "war has great advantages" and democratic armies may need an outlet sometimes, the army becomes even more impatient of peace when it has "tasted war."  So violence resorts to the fringes of society, to the army, and remains a "serious danger". What to do about it? T. prescribes the education of "orderly, upstanding, and free citizens" who would bring their "habits and mores" "almost in spite of themselves" to the army. The general spirit of the nation would, in a spill-over effect, temper the warlike ambitions of men in the army, and, over time, produce stability. Again, T. prescribes a sociological solution to the problem of violence.  It may be a political solution in the sense that T. argues that democratic practices and the installment of local government have the power to create habits. In employing government in the tempering of man, and the importance accorded to self-interest, he reminds of Hobbes. But the form of government could not be more different than from Hobbes.