Hobbes Vs Locke

In the state of nature man is in his natural form with no laws or rules dictating how one must live his or her life. In his book Leviathan (1651), philosopher Thomas Hobbes describes the state of nature as a chaotic state of warre in which we are in constant fear of being attacked, “and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short” (Leviathan 186)1. According to Hobbes, a government is absolutely crucial in ensuring that mankind does not descend into war. The reason Hobbes thought this was due to his belief that humans are inherently selfish and greedy and thus in a constant search for ways to quench their desires, Hobbes calls this ‘felicity’. The only way out of this state of war is by agreeing to a social contract in which people give up some of their natural rights in return for

Hobbes’s version of the Law of Nature gives human beings the right to self-preservation, even if this means harming others to protect one’s own life. One may argue that there is no definitive way of knowing whether Hobbes or Locke’s account of the state of nature are true as humans have always had some sort of sovereign power above them, never having the opportunity to live in their “natural form”.

According to Hobbes, human beings are power hungry as it is power that helps us achieve our objects of desire. He acknowledges that human beings are equal, but this is only as long as we do not desire the same things. Once this happens, competition results in a bloody war. For Hobbes, human beings are not gregarious creatures, we cannot think for the greater good - we only acknowledge our own interests. When we perceive another person as a threat, we do what we can in order to diminish them. It is in our nature to stop at nothing in order to get what we desire, even if this means harming another person, particularly in