Hobbes, Lock and Rousseau

The Concept of Nature in the Political Thinking of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

Nature plays a crucial role in the political thinking of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Hobbes' concept of nature is to a certain extent a paradoxical one, in so far as he regards man in the natural state as possessing complete liberty but unable to use that liberty for his own gratification for the very reason of his being in the natural state. Authority is necessary in order that every man may have the right to life, and the individual must submit to authority in all respects except that the law of nature gives him the right to his own life, wherefore it follows that he is not legitimately obligated to obey commands of the sovereign that would be inimical to his right to life. In developing this line of reasoning, Hobbes demonstrates that in so far as the state of nature involves a condition of all against all, the possession of complete liberty means that no one possesses that particular liberty which matters most�the right to his life:

To this war or ever many, against every man, this is also consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law; where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues...and thus much for the ill condition, which man by mere nature is actually placed in; though with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the

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de the basis of authority. Instead, just as force prevails in nature, so must force provide the basis of authority. Hobbes erred, in Rousseau's view, to the extent that he assumed that since man is not inherently good he must be inherently vicious and that authority based on force is necessary to keep in check the passions which prevail among men in a state of nature. "Above all, let us not conclude with Hobbes," writes Rousseau in this respect, "that because man has no idea of goodness, he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue;..." In contrast to Hobbes, and, for that matter, to Locke, Rousseau argues that man in the state of nature is neither good nor bad, because concepts such as those of goodness or badness are derived from society, and while the concept of nature does not provide the basis for an ethical critique of the policies of government neither does it provide a basis for government based on force as opposed to ethics. In other words, Hobbes' error, in Rousseau's view, lay in his assumption that because the individual in a state of nature has no sense of the good, men are inherently incapable of behaving justly to one another without the presence of authority based on compu

Category: Philosophy - H