Similarities Between Locke And Hobbes

This paper explores, in three parts, Thomas Hobbes’ and John Locke’s competing conceptions of natural laws and rights, via Leviathan and Second Treatise of Government respectively. The arguments of both men follow a similar path: the establishment of the state of nature and laws and rights therein, the social contracting to eliminate undesirable aspects of such a state, and the detailing of explicit conditions that meet the desired end of peaceful society. Thus, the paper will be divided into three sections, each of which will address the three topics listed above. Tracing each philosopher’s arguments in this way clearly and simply demonstrates how they establish fundamental principles and construct their own political theories from those principles.
The state of nature is thus a state in which all men abide by this facially straightforward law: “Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of nature” (Locke 15). Man’s rights, which Locke lists extensively, also take root in this law. In the exercise of his reason, Locke asserts, man will naturally conclude that all men are “equal and independent, [and] no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty, or possessions…” (9). Herein lies the foremost of Locke’s many natural rights: the right to life, liberty, and property.
As Locke proceeds in his reasoning, he divulges a list of rights. Locke, like Hobbes, argues that the right to self-preservation is one of these rights. Unlike Hobbes, however, Locke does not envision the natural state as militaristic because the law of nature, by which all men are ostensibly governed, “willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind” (9). As this statement demonstrates, Locke entrusts the law of nature with maintaining civility, but he also recognizes the possibility of
In the words of political scientist C.B. Macpherson, Hobbes’ people “would see that they had not only to give up their right to everything, but had also to transfer to some authority their natural powers to protect themselves” (44). Hobbes then defines this hitherto ambiguous “authority” as a sovereign office. As is implied, the duty of the sovereign is to maintain “the safety of the people” and “all other Contentments of life, which every man by lawfull Industry, without danger, or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himselfe” (Hobbes 376). However, as Macpherson says, the people contract their natural right to self-protection in exchange for the sovereign’s protection. As if the loss of one’s only right were not sufficiently unsettling, Hobbes imposes further conditions on the contract: “…when a man hath…granted away his Right; then he is said to be OBLIGED, or BOUND, not to hinder those, to whom such right is granted” (191). Hobbes adds that “he that transferreth any Right, transferreth the Means of enjoying it…” (197). In other words, if a man gives the sovereign his right to self-preservation, then he also forfeits his means to self-preservation. The obligation of the subject is thus to submit his natural powers to the sovereign, whose obligation is to protect the subjects. Importantly, this