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Hobbes Vs Rousseau Essay

1891 Words8 Pages

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. Hobbes starts off with addressing the foundation of where ideas come from and how they come to exist in the mind. According to Hobbes, ideas come to exist in the mind through material things which humans perceive using their senses. Each idea is derived from an original, material, object; from the material object, we create ideas based upon what we have seen. These ideas may be simple or a complex idea, either produced from one real object or a combination of real …show more content…

While Hobbes focuses on man’s natural instinct to fight. Rousseau, during his argument points out some of Hobbes viewpoints in which his thinking directly conflicts. For example, Rousseau analyzes Hobbes’s argument and deduces that “man is naturally intrepid and seeks only to attack and to fight” (20 Rousseau). However, according to Rousseau, fighting, war and anger are all societal values that a man in the true state would not possess. Another major difference between Hobbes and Rousseau is that Hobbes believes that man would still be social and have some “societal traits,” while according to Rousseau, man in nature would be completely secluded and have no form of communication or desires outside of personal

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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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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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