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John Locke Vs Hobbes

647 Words3 Pages

“Society is inside of man and man is inside society, and you cannot even create a truthfully drawn psychological entity on the stage until you understand his social relations and their power to make him what he is and to prevent him from being what he is not. The fish is in the water and the water is in the fish,” once proclaimed Arthur Miller. During the time of the 17th century, quarrels of power and order were on the rise. Among the quarrels were two of the most influential philosophers of government: John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Locke and Hobbes were both social contract theorists and natural law theorists. These men proudly expressed their own political philosophies concerning the disorder of the time. Hobbes focused his ideas on humankind. …show more content…

His philosophies of government, although, created quite a stir. He wanted an absolute monarch for his philosophical government. He figured that people were born with a social contract that were rights to relinquish the government for safety. Unlike Locke, he was under the belief that humankind was wicked, cruel, and selfish because they only did what they wanted to do. Freedom was not a considering factor for Hobbes due to the fact that people could not be trusted to govern themselves. Instead, the monarchy would enforce obedient behavior to keep the law in order. Due to Hobbes, the government had total and full control over the people and the people under it’s rule could not do anything to stop it. Since the ideas of Locke and Hobbes are so drastically different, it is not hard to choose which one would be better to form a society and base a government upon. Locke is more open-minded and ‘for’ the people. Whereas, Hobbes is insisting on a more powerful government rather than letting things remain equal. Between the two, Locke would form a more significant and adequate environment for his democracy over the people. He is definitely considerable of his people, rather than being a power-hungry overseer. His ideas are much more reasonable than Hobbes, due to the favor of the

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