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Comparison Of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke And Jean Jacques Rousseau

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A Lockean man is neither a Hobbesian man nor a Rousseauan man. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau were all philosophers who analysed the theory of social contract. “Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons' moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live.” (Friend.C, year unknown) Though all three of these men resided in Europe, they lived under different conditions and in different areas. This allowed each of them to analyse this theory from different perspectives. Per Hühne.T (2012), Hobbes claims that man is born naturally evil. He points out that man create wars and commit selfish acts all in the …show more content…

“Locke creates the other bipolar extreme to Hobbes by regarding the human nature as naturally good but- through the accumulation of property- inevitably turning into a state of war…” (Hühne.T,2012). Per Hühne.T (2012) Rousseau believes that men are born naturally good and that any evil action committed is influenced by the change in man’s environment and circumstances. So, what is an African man? Is an African man like any other man? Is an African man a man of colour living in Africa? Does an American whose ancestry is traced back to Africa make him an African man? An African man can be subjected to the ways of society like any other man and has the free will to believe in any of the three philosophers beliefs. In the short story titled “The Crow”; found in the book titled “Coming of the dry season”, Mungoshi.C (1972); the protagonist convinces his friend to hunt down a crow. Written in the first person the protagonist tells us that his mother and father went to church and told him to do the same. Instead he disobeyed and decided to hunt the crow with his friend Chiko. He believes that the crow is a naturally greedy thief that steels nuts of the bush. Other than that, there is no other explanation as to why they wanted to kill the

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DeAndre’ Royster Simple,and Exclusive The natural state of mankind before forming a government. Hobbes and Locke both believed in a state of nature. They also both believed in a social contract. Hobbes wanted a government to protect people from each other.

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Hobbes believed that “it is not possible for people to have both freedom and peace, since the state of freedom is a state of unlimited greed and war.” (Document C). i believe that hobbes is right about how there are many selfish people and if it came down to you or them, who would you choose? It is most likely that one chooses to save themselves because at a certain time it comes down to survival. Hobbes thought that we should have a ruler such as a king or queen because “democracy- allowing citizens to vote for government leaders- would never work.

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Hobbes and Locke had opposing views and interpretations of men and their state of nature. Hobbes was around during the time that an absolute monarchy was the acceptable type of government for society. This was most acceptable to Hobbes because he believed that if society would leave man in his own state of nature he would be brutish. Also he believed that a government with

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Hobbes and locke were two philosophers who two different ideas on the world and human behavior as a whole. Hobbes mainly believed that without any form of government people will always be trying to fight for power. On the other hand, Locke believed everyone is born peaceful but can be corrupted by society. Hobbes and Locke both had very different views on different human nature, the purpose of government, and both had a big influence on many different countries.

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Hobbes (1660) stated, “…every man is enemy to every man” (p.1909). He truly believed that the government had to rule completely and that the people had no say in the actions taken by the government. According to Cohen (2011), Hobbes believed that “The Hobbesian natural laws command our submission to a sovereign power” (p.462). On the contrary, Locke believed in Democracy,

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For Hobbes, the state of nature is a constant state of war by which all humans are equally capable of harming one another (Hobbes 185). Thus, humans require, “the mutual transferring of rights”, a contract with a sovereign authority to provide security and to protect humans from harming one another (Hobbes 192). Furthermore, Rousseau contends that, “all legitimate authority among men must be based on covenants” (Rousseau 53) and man will reach a point within the state of nature where, “obstacles to their preservation prove greater than the strength of each man” (Rousseau 59). Hobbes and Rousseau share similarities in the premise of their arguments by acknowledging the fundamental source of human motivation, the flaws of living within the state of nature, and the necessity of contract or a social pact between men and a sovereign

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1471 Words | 6 Pages

Hobbes believed that if man was put in a state of nature with no governing force they would be in a constant struggle for power or endless warfare, saying “Therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies… ”(Hobbes in Perry, pg.21) This quote demonstrates Hobbes’ pessimistic view of man in which he acts always in his own self interest, even if that means war. On the other hand John Locke believed everyone is granted natural rights. These rights include “life, liberty, and property.

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And somewhere in the realm of 400 years ago, two prominent opposing “parties” were Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes’ ideas were more strict, as he was less of a ‘for-the-people’ kind of guy, while Locke believed in many natural rights for man; and in the end, the colonists being affected by these two men’s political battles, went for the man who seemed like someone who actually wanted people to like him - John Locke. Thomas Hobbes has been called many things, from a lunatic to a genius, but despite what some people might say, the man had his political thoughts in order. As the founding father of political philosophies, his number one concern in his work was how human beings could live simultaneously together peacefully, all the while avoiding the

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Hobbes and Locke: “Are we inherently good or evil?” During the XVI-XVII centuries one of the basic questions of philosophy was the problem of power and government. As known, it was at this time that England endured the revolution and civil war. Two of the most famous English philosopher of this time were Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Development issues of moral and civil philosophy, or the philosophy of the state, attracted attention of philosophers.

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When comparing the two different accounts of English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke we must take into consideration a number of things such as the age in which they lived and the time in which they produced their philosophical writings. We will however find out that these two philosophers actually have a couple of things in which agree on even though most of their opinions clash. On one side we have Thomas Hobbes who lived in the time of the English Civil War (1642-1651) who provides a negative framework for his philosophical opinions in his masterpiece Leviathan and who advocates for philosophical absolutism . On the other side we have John Locke, living during the glorious revolution (1688-1689) he presents a positive attitude in his book The Second Treatise of Government and advocates for philosophical and biblical constitutionalism. It is important that we know that the state of nature describes a pre- political society prior to the social contract.

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Locke’s latent yet thorough critique of Hobbes’ State-of-Nature is particularly clear in the following subjects: the nature of man,

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Most importantly, Hobbes, Locke, and Rawls all agreed that the government should be based on a social contract. According to the text’s author, Dr. John Chaffee, a social contract is an agreement made between the people and their ruler or amongst the people in a community (Chaffee, 10.3). According to Hobbes, humans begin in the “state of nature,” that is unconstrained by laws or social agreements. He suggests that a society must have a social contract to live in peace and to coexist with one another.

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Hobbes and Rousseau both wrote a vast number of articles on the idea of human nature and the true behaviors of humans with no influence of society. No one can truly know what the true nature of a human is, due to the fact that all of our history is written from a civilized time, and we make inferences about our history. Rousseau and Hobbes both try to infer based upon their philosophical view points about the human mind. Rousseau believes that humans in the natural state are more similar to animals, than other man. While Hobbes believes that humans in their natural state are evil because they don’t know “good”, and their innate behavior is war.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, two titans of the Enlightenment, work within similar intellectual frameworks in their seminal writings. Hobbes, in Leviathan, postulates a “state of nature” before society developed, using it as a tool to analyze the emergence of governing institutions. Rousseau borrows this conceit in Discourse on Inequality, tracing the development of man from a primitive state to modern society. Hobbes contends that man is equal in conflict during the state of nature and then remains equal under government due to the ruler’s monopoly on authority. Rousseau, meanwhile, believes that man is equal in harmony in the state of nature and then unequal in developed society.

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Hobbes was an English philosopher, known through out the world as the author of “Leviathan” which is regarded as one of the earliest examples of the social contract theory. His writings were greatly influenced by the

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