LOCKE AND HOBBES ON GOVERNMENT

It seems somehow self-evident that "the state of nature"- or natural laws, are meant as a guide-post to how men should conduct themselves in harmony or opposition to others. Hobbes, in an earlier century, has little hope that men are totally able to find a political solution by themselves. They require a strong leader, a sovereign who supposedly has the best interests of his subjects at heart. We know, of course, from history that this was (and is) wishful thinking. Locke gives people more credit, but also has a restraining hold on what one might call "total" freedom. He expands on both Hobbes' and Rousseau's idea of a "contract", more political here than social.

Locke believes that men, naturally, are in "a state of perfect freedoma.within the bounds of the laws of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man" (Locke 8). Locke sees this state as being one of equality where all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal. In a sense, this might even be considered the perfect form of communism, whereby everyone receives back whatever it is he contributes.

At the same time, Locke differentiates between "liberty" and "licence" (sic). Locke goes further here than most others who discuss the rights and obligations of the governed and those who govern by literally damning those who would seek to harm others and deprive them of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He somehow brings relig

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d Treatise which surely resounds centuries later: his mention of "the dignity of man" (13). Surely this evidenced in the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as well as in France's Rights of Man. Hobbes, surely, would have sided with the Bourbons. Nevertheless, it would be fair to assume that neither man had total faith in the ability of man to govern himself and thus to move ahead to a life of liberty and justice for all. While Locke's natural laws included the dichotomy of guilt vs. innocence, justice vs. injustice, and liberty vs. license, Hobbes was in the covenants and contracts man made which were to be honored and overseen by some arbitrator based on merit. It seems fairly reasonable to assume that this arbitrator would not be what American justice would call a "jury of one's peers." They must "submit" (95) to an arbitrator. "Submit" is a word n not found in Locke's thesis. Hobbes makes this quite clear, whether he refers to God or to some sovereign, when he claims that "men have no pleasure (but on the contrary a great deal of grief) in keeping company where there is no power unable to overawe them all" (Hobbes 85). Can one hastily surmise here that an Englishman would prefer a status where he wo
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Approximate Word count = 1976
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)