Hobbes, Locke & the Argument About the State of Nature

You’ll be able to

Compare Hobbes’s and Locke’s accounts of human nature and the social contract
Explain how each justified a different form of legitimate government
Connect both to the political crises they were written in response to

The same device, opposite conclusions

Both writers use a thought experiment: imagine people before government, then ask what they would rationally agree to. The device is identical; the answers diverge because the assumptions about human nature do. This is worth grasping as a method, because it is what makes both arguments secular — legitimacy is derived from what people would consent to, not from divine appointment or ancient custom, and that shift is the foundation of modern political thought.

Hobbes: absolute sovereignty as the price of peace

Writing during the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes described the state of nature in Leviathan (1651) as a war of every man against every man, where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Rough equality of ability means anyone can kill anyone, so no one is ever safe. Rational people therefore surrender their rights irrevocably to a sovereign — one person or assembly — whose power must be absolute and undivided, because a divided sovereign is no sovereign and returns them to civil war. Note the sting: Hobbes reaches absolutism by a secular, contractual argument, which pleased royalists no more than it did parliamentarians.

Locke: limited government and the right of revolution

Writing around the Glorious Revolution, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690) begins from a state of nature governed by natural law, in which people already possess rights to life, liberty and property. It is inconvenient rather than terrifying — there is no impartial judge — so people establish government as a trustee with limited, delegated powers. If it violates the trust by attacking the rights it exists to protect, the people may dissolve it and form another. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) supplies the psychological ground: the mind is a tabula rasa, so people are shaped by experience and education, which makes reform meaningful.

On the exam

The most common error is treating Hobbes as a defender of divine right. He is not — he is the opposite kind of absolutist. His sovereign is legitimate because subjects would rationally consent, not because God appointed him. Say "secular absolutism" and the distinction is earned in three words.

Worked example

Briefly explain how Hobbes and Locke differed on the state of nature, and explain how that difference produced different conclusions about resistance to government.

1.State Hobbes’s premise and its consequence: without authority there is a war of all against all, so any government is preferable to none.
2.Draw his conclusion about resistance: because the alternative to sovereignty is civil war, subjects have surrendered their rights irrevocably and rebellion is never justified.
3.State Locke’s premise: the state of nature already contains natural rights and natural law, and is inconvenient rather than intolerable.
4.Draw his conclusion: government holds power in trust for a limited purpose, so violating that trust dissolves it and legitimizes replacing it.

Answer: Hobbes held that without government life is a war of all against all, so people rationally surrender their rights irrevocably to an absolute sovereign; since the only alternative to sovereignty is that war, no grievance can justify rebellion. Locke held that the state of nature is governed by natural law and already contains rights to life, liberty and property, lacking only an impartial judge; government is therefore a trustee with delegated and limited powers, and a government that attacks the rights it was created to protect has dissolved the trust, leaving the people free to replace it.

Checkpoint

Hobbes’s argument for absolute sovereignty rests on the claim that —

Checkpoint

Locke’s description of the mind as a *tabula rasa* mattered politically because it implied that —

Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.