John Locke And Hobbes Research Paper

John Locke and Thomas Hobbes were two important philosophers from the seventeenth century. The two were born nearly 50 years apart – Hobbes in 1588 and Locke in 1632 – and yet, they each managed to have a major impact on their time and our own. The philosophical viewpoints of Locke and Hobbes are, in most cases, in strict opposition of each other. There are certain points at which the theories of both men collide; however, their synonymous beliefs are exactly the point at which their theories begin to diverge again.
John Locke is considered to be the first of the British Empiricists, who believed that in order to truly gain knowledge of a certain thing, any individual would first have to experience something from which they would gain that knowledge. He is thought to be one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced many other famous philosophers, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, as well as the American revolutionaries. The Declaration of Independence clearly shows his influence. Locke attended the Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, a member of British
This Leviathan, as Hobbes proposed, would define the rights and duties of each party. Hobbes believed that once the contract was instituted, it would be irrevocable. No individual would be able to change their individual rights at a later time, and the government would ultimately have power over them from then on. Locke saw the agreement as less binding. Because he believed that each individual was born with certain natural rights that no other human being could revoke, the contract between the individuals and the state would always be conditional – meaning that individuals retained the option to withdraw their consent and preserve those natural rights whenever they saw