John Locke Synthesis

Individuals control their lives through the rights and personal freedoms. The natural state of humanity promotes personal freedom and rights with the demand of peace. They are born inherently good and in a “state of perfect freedom.”1 The law of nature is the primitive law of life that creates personal rights. The law of nature protects people’s freedoms and keeps them under a code. While individuals are born inherently good, moderate greed is included in the law of nature as a way for “[man] to preserve himself” and to “preserve the rest of mankind.”2 The individual is put before all of mankind because mankind cannot survive without the individual. While the individual is the most important there are restrictions to protect each man’s freedom. The law of nature Hobbes creates a state of nature where each man fights and survives for himself. In Hobbes’s state of nature there is no way for each man to thrive. Locke believes that not all men are evil and sets the law of nature to be livable for all individuals. Locke does not follow Hobbes’s brutal state of nature by not allowing men to violate the rights of other individuals. Individuals create societies and give them the strength in order to prosper. By sacrificing natural freedoms societies gain stability and become prosperous, but society can only be created when individuals give up their freedoms and enter into a social contract. Individuals “give up all power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society,”3 in return individuals gain protection. They sacrifice their freedoms to benefit all of mankind. This “consent of the individuals” gives society its power and permanence.4 Power is not gained through violence as it would violate the law of nature. Thomas More places the common good before individual concerns because people “are but bricks in a wall.”5 Locke says that without each individual brick the wall would not stand, as with the individual, without them society would be nonexistent. Therefore, the individual is more prominent in concern than the concern of the common good. Hobbes creates a social contract as a sort of trading system between government and the individual; the individual trades in their individual rights to the government in order to have protection.6 Locke recognizes that a man is nothing without his rights and his social contract the government takes away freedoms but not rights of the individual. The government may not overstep their boundaries or individuals will destroy them. They are to act “according to discretion, for the public good,”7 and if the government exceeds their limits then the individuals have the right to overthrow them. The law of nature states that the second duty of people is to help mankind; therefore they must destroy all that oppresses mankind. Hobbes believes monarchies provide the most stable and beneficial government because all ideas and power is centralized into one person. Locke believes absolute monarchies are not civil and cannot model a perfect government. Plato inspires people to challenge authority to find the truth. Locke takes the concept of challenging the authority and puts it into action. Plato also teaches about implicit consent. If an individual does not agree with the government then they should leave the government. 8 Locke slightly changes implicit consent because Plato believes in leaving the government and Locke says to stay and try to fix the issue.