Hobbes-Rousseau-Locke

Reconciliation of Hobbes-Rousseau-Locke

The history of political theory has considered Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau as the best examples of social contract theory. Each conceived and developed a theory that explained the state of nature in which men are before reaching this social contract, the need to form this contract and the role or function that the government should have. In this essay I will show which of these theories give a more accurate vision of reality.

Each wrote their theory in different times and contexts, so that even when there are common points, there are also deep disagreements. First, I'll explain the main ideas of each author, then, I shall endeavor to choose the explanation that best explain reality and eventually will relate these theories to better explain contemporary reality.

The state of nature

The state of nature is a hypothetical scenario that works for each of these three classic authors to present a starting point. None actually think that this situation existed in which all people are in complete independence between them.

They use this situation to expose the man who exists in a situation prior to the State, the man who does not live within the social contract. These three thinkers question: how would the man be if there were any government or state?

Thomas Hobbes thinks and feels that man is alone, all alone, the man moves in anguish, threats to his health are everywhere, death is waiting around every corner. Men are approximately equal: "Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of body and mind as that ... the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, either by secret machination or by confederacy with others that are in the same danger with himself." The society in which Hobbes lived was one where there was a lack of peace. Violence prevents man's social life.

On the other hand, John Locke, the great constitutionalist, rights defender, has an idea of the people and the state of nature that differs from the theory of Hobbes. The first difference between Locke and Hobbes is that the last one believes in the morality of man; the second thought that where there is no law, there’s no sin. Locke has a moral intelligence, Hobbes has a political intelligence, and one might say, legal. Hobbes thinks of the language of rights and obligations. Locke thinks in that language but also thinks in another one, which is the moral language.

Man is a moral animal, says Locke, but also an economic animal. Private property is the center of his state theory because the man is an economic animal. The importance given to property by Locke is very broad: he thinks the property is part of ourselves.

Locke tells us that in the state of nature men is at perfect liberty to do whatever they want, except harming another in his life, health, liberty and possessions. To own property, we work for what we want to be our own. At first, nature is all. Subsequently, the human acquires the fruits of their labor. He calls this property. What I possess and what I have worked, is mine.

The picture of the state of nature that John Lock draws us is not the same scenario as dramatically frightening as Thomas Hobbes wrote. The dispute in the state of nature is taken for the property, not for survival.

Finally, Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought that man is kind by nature, evil comes from society. In the state of nature all men live in harmony, they are "noble savages".

Like John Locke, Rousseau will give great importance to private property in its exposition of the theory of social contract but, unlike the him, it will say that private property is the source of inequality, mutual dependency, jealousy and war. The private property, for Rousseau, is always a source of conflict and disputes among men.

Hobbes is dramatic and a skeptic in his vision of man. He thinks the man without law is a beast, driven solely by his instincts. Without a strong third party, without a "mortal god” to inhibit these behaviors (the state), men are destined to kill each other. So it is that the State is a possibility of salvation against the human condition, on the other hand, Rousseau has a delusion about the innate goodness of man, Locke is in a middle ground: he doesn’t think men are intended to kill each other rather, that men, without an institution to intervene to mediate conflicts or fights, are doomed to violence, because of the private property.

I believe Locke representation of man in the state of nature is the closest to reality. He speaks of human rights that precede the birth of the State and its Constitution, implying that there is goodness in men. However, he also takes into account that not only does goodness exist and for this reason is that these rights must be protected. They should be provided in the Constitution and upheld by the state because the man is not only kind and there is also envy, that moves to infringe upon the rights of others, they must be not only protected, but that its exercise must be guaranteed.

You can think picture a man, which Locke imagined, living his life without harming others. However, this economical being would not like being robbed or assaulted by another. If this happens, he will tend to have revenge, to regain what was taken away from him in an arbitrary way; and probably this revenge will be in greater proportion than the initial assault. It will become a cycle where attacks will get bigger, collaterally involving others until the "state of war" is reached.

In this "state of war" could happen all what Thomas Hobbes described in The Leviathan. In this state, you cannot trust anything or anyone. The covenants shall not be valid; the agreement will be impossible, safety an illusion and nothing more. In the "state of war" there is no certainty of anything, except fear.

Therefore it is to consider that Locke’s representation of man and Hobbes' state of nature are the most successful in terms of its relation to reality. That being said, it is appropriate to proceed into analyzing the reasons that each author presents to move from this state of nature to the civil state, the ratio of the social contract.

On the social contract

The social contract is again another fiction created by these authors. Again, no one thinks that there was a historical moment in which all members of a society or a nascent state sat down to draw up and sign a contract. However, it serves to represent the passage from the state of nature to the civil state and justify what each author considered that were relevant to explain the necessity of this transition.

As mentioned earlier, Thomas Hobbes thinks that the state of nature is a constant and incessant war. A war that, without an institution to intervene, would

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