The Ideas Of Government Held By Locke And Hobbes

The ideas that Hobbes and Locke set forth in their essays are opposite each other. Hobbes retains the notion that if there is not a power to keep people in their place, they will continually be in war against each other. His Leviathan presents a bleak picture of human beings in the state of nature, where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Locke on the other hand, presented humans in a more rational, tolerant, and cooperative state but agreed with Hobbes upon the origin of the “social contract” (an implicit agreement between everyone in a society to respect legal authority, so as to enable the pursuit of happiness).
Hobbes saw government as a single governing body, made up of power given ...

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usefulness and not on grounds of divine right. Hobbes explained that fear of violent death is the principle motive that causes people to create a state. In order to maintain a stable society, people made an unwritten “social contract.” So people chose a leader to rule them, and any attempt to break this contract is punishable by whatever penalty the monarchy may exact in order to protect his subjects from returning to that state of anarchy.
Hobbes’ theory seems to put more at stake. Continual war is inevitable if there is no government. Thus protection of that government is essentials; his rational being that, until we are in a state of war with the government, the government still has something to offer us. Locke on the contrary finds the chances involved in revolution if the rights and property of the majority are not being protected.
Locke believed that people had given up some rights, but the rights that were kept were the natural rights, which included the right to live, ...

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The Ideas Of Government Held By Locke And Hobbes. (2007, May 6). Retrieved October 23, 2018, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Ideas-Government-Held-Locke-Hobbes/64440

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Added: 5/6/2007 11:51:56 AM
Category: English
Type: Free Paper
Words: 818
Pages: 3

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