Hobbes’s opinions about politics and government were far different from fellow English philosopher John Locke’s in his document Second Treatise of Government published in 1689. Locke existed during a much later period in Europe, when the Wars of Religion was over and England had established the Glorious Revolution Agreement between Dutch nobility, William and Mary, and Parliament. Due to the different time periods in which Hobbes and Locke lived, their experiences had a major effect on their opinions about government. Hobbes’ Leviathan and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government had different opinions regarding a man’s state of nature and social contract.
“In 1651, Hobbes wrote one of the most influential philosophical treatises in human history, Leviathan or the Matter Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil. Like his rival, John Locke, Hobbes posited that in a state of nature men and women were free to pursue and defend their own interests, which resulted in a state of war in which “the life of man” was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. ”(“Philosopher who influenced the Founding Fathers and the First Principles,”
In the condition of nature, where man is put at war against man, no security is conceivable and life is brimming with terror. In any case, two common interests empower individuals to get away from the condition of nature; Hobbes’ refers to them as trepidation and reason (pg.108). Angst makes man need to get away from the condition of nature; logic demonstrates to him a method to get away. Reason gives the laws that Hobbes creates, which constitute the establishment for peace.
To begin, Locke and Hobbes were two outstanding thinkers who argued in different ways, Hobbes believed in the legitimacy of absolute monarch and Locke believed in a government based on the will of the people being governed. They both represented a growing trend in European society in the 17th and 18th centuries to use reason as the final judgment of things, including the conduct of kings. They contributed to modern political science, and they both had similar views on where power lies in a society. Hobbes has influenced to some degree what can be done to change a government by the people, the contributions Hobbes did led to the foundation of what today is the conservative party. On the other hand, Locke was very influential in shaping modern politics, our current view of human nature, the nature of individual rights, the popular constitutions that exist today and the building blocks of the liberal party.
Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality and Social Contract each attempt to explain the rise of and prescribe the proper management of human society. At the foundation of both philosophies is the principle that humans are asocial by nature, a precept each philosopher interprets and approaches in a different way. Hobbes states that nature made humans relatively “equal,” and that “every man is enemy to every man.” Life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” he says, and “every man has right to everything.” Rousseau outlines primitive asocial man having “everything necessary for him to live in the state of nature” from “instinct alone,” and being “neither good nor evil.”
Both social contract philosophers defended different views about moral and political obligations of men living in the state of nature stripped of their social characters. The state of nature illustrates how human beings acted prior to entering into civil society and becoming social beings living under common legitimacy. The state of nature is to be illustrated as a hypothetical device to explain political importance in the society. Thomas Hobbes, propounded politics and morality in his concept of the state
He believes that the human condition, the traditions, experiences, and knowledge acquired by humans, is far to complex to be described by science and therefore avoids he commonly held views of political science from the Enlightenment Era. However, Thomas Hobbes, as he writes in Leviathan (1651) believed that all political phenomenons could be reported systematically as he equated all humans to machines, predictable by consistently acting in their self interest. [PG 3] Burke’s criticism that can be applied to Hobbes lies on three fronts; that the understanding human condition cannot be derived through logic; that consent, explicit or tacit, does not exist after the first social contract; and that a rebellion is neither possible nor effective when in a social contract. Thomas Hobbes’ prefaces his discussion of the social contract by giving credence to what he understood as science.
Hobbes viewed state of nature as a state of war. According to Hobbes, in a state of nature, there is no right to property because no one affords another that right. He stated that property and possessions would inevitably cause men to become enemies. Hobbes believes that people have equal physical and mental ability to harm, and that people will do so for three reasons - competition, difference, and glory. " so that in the state of nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel, first, competition; secondly, difference; thirdly, glory" (Hobbes 2008, p.85).
Thomas Hobbes has been famous for his philosophies on political and social order. In many of his scholastic works, he maintains the position that in the presence of a higher authority the duty of the rest of mankind is to simply obey. The discourse on this essay will focus on his views expressed in his book The Leviathan. In this book Hobbes’ views are fundamentally entrenched in his description that in a society with no higher authority life would be nasty, short and brutish (?) .This essay will engage in discussion by first laying out the conceptual arguments of anarchy and the human state of nature.
While Hobbes also states that the human nature does not allow for the people to live in peace and to pursue common goals since “here are very many that think themselves wiser and abler to govern the public better than the rest” (Hobbes 3). respectively, there always exists the notion of competition, and if there is no possibility to reach consensus over the issue, there is the need for establishing an authority. This is the reflection of the social contract idea in the work by Hobbes as far as the author is concerned that only through common action and goals the society is able to function without problems and conflicts. Nevertheless, even though, in contrast to Machiavelli, Hobbes suggests the way of getting power that is based on agreement rather than on power and intellectual games, their ideas regarding the need for a strong ruler who would be able to establish the order in the society is rather similar, even though in one case this task is taken by a person himself and in the other case delivered by the
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.
Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau have become known as three of the most prominent political theorists in the world today. Their philosophies and innovative thinking is known worldwide and it has influenced the creation of numerous new governments. All three thinkers agree on the idea of a social contract but their opinions differ on how the social contract is established and implemented within each society. These philosophers state, that in order for the social contract to be successful people need to give up certain freedoms in order to secure fundamental protections from the state, henceforth the state then has certain responsibilities to their citizens. Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all believe that before men were governed we all lived in a state of nature.
Thomas Hobbes proposed that the ideal government should be an absolute monarchy as a direct result of experiencing the English Civil War, in which there was internal conflict between the parliamentarians and the royalists. Hobbes made this claim under the assumption that an absolute monarchy would produce consistent policies, reduce conflicts and lower the risk of civil wars due to the singular nature of this ruling system. On another hand, John Locke counters this proposal with the view that absolute monarchies are not legitimate as they are inconsistent with the state of nature. These two diametrically opposed views stem from Hobbes’ and Locke’s different understandings of human nature, namely with regard to power relationships, punishment, and equality in the state of nature. Hobbes’ belief that human beings are selfish and appetitive is antithetical with Locke’s contention that human beings are intrinsically moral even in the state of nature, which results in Locke’s strong disagreement with Hobbes’ proposed absolute monarchy.
The secondary literature on Hobbes's moral and political philosophy (not to speak of his entire body of work) is vast, appearing across many disciplines and in many languages. There are two major aspects to Hobbes's picture of human nature. As we have seen, and will explore below, what motivates human beings to act is extremely important to Hobbes. The other aspect concerns human powers of judgment and reasoning, about which Hobbes tends to be extremely skeptical. Like many philosophers before him, Hobbes wants to present a more solid and certain account of human morality than is contained in everyday beliefs.
John Locke’s political theory offers an extraordinary paradigm, critiquing the normal paradigm of his time, space and socio-economic milieu (McDONALD 1973 : 602 - 604). He is a radical proponent of individual freedom, toleration, conscience and a civil government. Lockean ideas in the contemporary world are broadly classified into two extreme interpretations of liberal constitutionalism and Marxism. Locke is economically mercantile, politically conservative and highly Christian in his political and moral theoretical framework. This essay will focus on portraying the grounds on which Locke is considered a modern liberal constitutionalist, taking into account his major works, A Letter Concerning Toleration(1689) and The Second Treatise of Civil Government(1689).
