Hobbes Locke Sovereignty

Sovereignty and Right in the Eyes of Hobbes and Locke The state of nature is the common thread between Hobbes and Locke. It is a realm of reality that would ensue if society was disbanded and human nature dictated man’s actions. Hobbes and Locke considered the state of nature and how humans acted without outside forces as indicators to show how politics should work. It is the absence of order and rule, that helps both philosophers determine the complete opposite, sovereignty from a political covenant. Although both their ideas of sovereignty stem from an analysis of the state of nature, they do not arrive at the same kind of sovereign, because they have different interpretations and conclusions on human nature. For Hobbes, England was not

A government can be helpful to protect individual freedom. Locke’s political covenant suggests that in order to have liberty, men must give up a small portion of their personal freedom, to maintain whatever is left. Locke writes, “every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it” (The Second Treatise of Civil Government, 8). In exchange, the goal of the one government would be to help it’s people maintain their

Therefore, for Locke, sovereignty does not reside in a monarch, but the people. With this idea, Locke suggests that people do not need to be afraid of their sovereign. There is no need for Hobbes’s Leviathan because, “men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent” (The Second Treatise of Civil Government, 8). For Hobbes, a civilized peaceful society would not exist if it they did not have a leviathan. On the contrary, for Locke, the existence of the government was not necessary for society to exist, it was necessary for mankind to exist comfortably. The people Locke had in mind, were to voluntarily give up a small portion of their freedom and were not forced into the political covenant. In turn, they were not united as a society out of common fear, but out of a common understanding that they were the ones who granted the government