Social Contract Theory – Hobbes and Locke

Everyday Presence of Social-Contract Thinking

  • Liberal democracies (e.g., the U.S.) operate on implicit social-contract assumptions every day.
  • Encounters with purely Platonist virtue or Machiavellian cunning are rare, but citizens constantly live under rules, rights, and duties justified by social-contract logic.

Contrast With Earlier Theories

  • Plato
    • Inequality assumed: people have unequal natural gifts; society should be run by the most qualified “guardians.”
    • Community is natural when each person specializes.
  • Natural-law Scholastics (e.g., Aquinas)
    • Politics advances moral virtue; power legitimacy tied to virtue and God.
  • Machiavelli
    • Early modern break from moralized politics; analyzes power amoral­ly.
  • Social-contract theorists (Hobbes & Locke)
    • Premise of equality: start from the notion that all are naturally free and equal.
    • See the state as artificial; must be explained and justified.
    • Offer rational criteria for judging forms of government.

General Questions Social-Contract Theory Tries to Answer

  • Why does political life exist at all?
  • Why does it have this structure and not another?
  • What type of regime is best justified?
  • On what basis do rulers legitimately command obedience?
  • If the state is a creation, when may it be altered or dissolved?

Shared Presuppositions of Hobbes & Locke

  • Political society is not a natural starting point; it arises through consent (hypothetical or tacit).
  • Every individual is, at baseline, physically and mentally equal enough that no single person can dominate all others by nature alone.
  • People are rational calculators of self-interest.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Biographical & Intellectual Context

  • Nicknamed the “Monster of Malmsbury.”
  • A materialist: only matter exists; if God exists, He is material.
    • Materialism ≈ atheism in public imagination, tainting Hobbes’s reputation.
  • Lived through the English Civil Wars (1640s–1650s):
    • Conflict among aristocracy, rising middle/commercial class, and monarchy.
    • Enclosure movement: landlords & merchants evict serfs to graze sheep for the textile boom → social upheaval.
    • Execution of King Charles I shocked defenders of order.

Major Work

  • Leviathan (1651): systematic treatise on metaphysics, psychology, and politics.
    • Goal: prove that civil war is always irrational and that stability under any sovereign is preferable.

Method: Applying Early Modern Science to Politics

  • Inspired by Galileo & Descartes.
  • Scientific pattern:
    1. Break a complex system into simpler components (e.g., analyze a rolling ball to deduce cannon-ball trajectories).
    2. Discover laws governing the parts.
    3. Reassemble to explain the whole.
  • Political analogue:
    1. Reduce the state to its “atoms”: isolated individuals.
    2. Formulate laws of human behavior in the absence of government.
    3. Reapply those laws to explain the need for, and structure of, government.

The State of Nature (Hobbes)

  • A purely hypothetical “laboratory” with no common power, no morality, no law.
  • Human “atoms” pursue only self-preservation and endless desires.
  • Key premises of human nature:
    • Psychological egoism: each seeks to satisfy own desires.
    • Equality of ability: Even “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest” via cunning.
    • Rationality = instrumental: reason calculates means to desires.
  • Scarcity + egoism → competition, diffidence, glory-seeking.
  • Result: a permanent “war of all against all” (\text{bellum omnium contra omnes}).
    • Life is “\text{solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short}.”

Laws of Nature (Hobbes’s Rational Insights)

  1. Seek peace where possible; resort to war only when peace is unattainable.
  2. Mutual renunciation: be willing, when others are cũng, to lay down the unlimited right to all things and accept equal liberty/restrictions.
  • Such “laws” are merely rational counsels; without enforcement they are “words without the sword.”

The Social Contract & Emergence of the Sovereign

  • Each person covenants with every other to transfer their natural right of self-defense to a common power.
  • The agreement itself creates a Sovereign (could be monarch, parliament, or assembly).
  • Characteristics of Hobbesian Sovereign:
    • Absolute & indivisible; cannot be wrong in law.
    • Creates civil rights, makes war/peace, appoints officials.
    • Embodiment of the people’s collective will.
  • Political obligation:
    • No right of revolution. Overthrowing the sovereign = return to the state of nature, the worst conceivable fate.

Critiques of Hobbes

  • Pessimistic anthropology: denies intrinsic sociability or altruism.
  • Artificial dichotomy: treats choice as (a) jungle versus (b) a single, unalterable civil order.
  • Absolutism: Assumes only an unrestricted sovereign can avert anarchy.

John Locke (1632–1704)

Importance & Legacy

  • Philosopher of mind/knowledge and politics.
  • Second Treatise of Government (c. 1689) foundational for liberal democracy.
  • Direct intellectual source for Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, and U.S. constitutional principles.

Continuities With Hobbes

  • Begins with a state of nature of free, equal, rational individuals.
  • Government arises by consent to better secure interests.

Locke’s State of Nature: A Milder Picture

  • Not a perpetual war; people coexist with basic natural rights.
  • Main inconveniences:
    1. No settled, known law.
    2. No impartial judges.
    3. No common executive power to enforce right judgments.
  • Consequently, property and personal security are uncertain.

Why Leave the State of Nature?

  • Primary motive = Preservation of Property (broadly: life, liberties, estates, and labor products).
  • Quote: “The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths … is the preservation of their property.”

Gains From Civil Society

  • Established law: publicly known, stable rules.
  • Objective judiciary: neutral application of law.
  • Executive power: state holds legitimate force to carry out sentences.
  • Result: greater peace, convenience, and prosperity than in the state of nature.

Locke’s Social Contract & Limited Government

  • People covenant to transfer the execution of natural law, but not all rights.
  • Sovereign power (often identified with the legislative body) is limited:
    1. Must govern by standing, promulgated laws.
    2. Laws must aim at the public good.
    3. Taxation requires consent of the governed (foreshadows “no taxation without representation”).
    4. Cannot delegate legislative authority to others.

Right of Revolution

  • When the government tries to destroy or confiscate property arbitrarily, it “puts itself into a state of war with the people.”
  • Citizens are then “absolved from any further obedience” and may dissolve the government to form a new one.
  • Revolution is conditional, limited, and remedial, not an automatic plunge back into anarchy.

Influence on the American Founding

  • Jefferson’s 1776 Declaration of Independence echoes Locke:
    • Natural equality & rights (“all men are created equal”).
    • Governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
    • Right “to alter or to abolish” governments that become destructive.
  • Demonstrates direct migration of social-contract thought into real-world revolutionary politics.

Ethical, Philosophical, and Practical Implications

  • Shift from divinely sanctioned monarchy → popular sovereignty.
  • Introduction of the idea that legitimacy can be withdrawn when the state violates its purpose.
  • Foundations for modern concepts: rule of law, constitutionalism, limited government, human rights.
  • Ongoing debates:
    • Is human nature cooperative or egoistic?
    • How much power must be centralized for security without sliding into tyranny?
    • Under what exact conditions is rebellion justified?

Memorable Phrases & Key Terms

  • State of nature (Hobbes): “nasty, brutish, and short.”
  • \text{Bellum omnium contra omnes}: war of every man against every man.
  • “Monster of Malmsbury” – epithet for Hobbes.
  • Social contract – mutual covenant creating political society.
  • Sovereign – person(s) wielding supreme coercive power.
  • Natural law (Hobbes): rational rules that would benefit all if universally observed.
  • Property (Locke): inclusive of life, liberty, and estate.
  • Consent of the governed – cornerstone of legitimate authority.

Quick Comparative Table (Hobbes vs Locke)

  • State of Nature
    • Hobbes: Violent chaos.
    • Locke: Inconvenient but mostly peaceful.
  • Primary Motive for Contract
    • Hobbes: Survival.
    • Locke: Secure property & improve life.
  • View of Human Nature
    • Hobbes: Egoistic, fearful, power-hungry.
    • Locke: Rational, capable of cooperation.
  • Sovereign Power
    • Hobbes: Absolute.
    • Locke: Limited by law & public good.
  • Right of Revolution
    • Hobbes: Never.
    • Locke: Yes, when government betrays trust.

Study Tips

  • Understand each theorist’s assumptions about human nature; all later conclusions flow from these.
  • Keep the historical backdrop (English Civil War, Enclosures, Scientific Revolution, Glorious Revolution) in mind; it explains why stability or rights took center stage.
  • Compare how “equality” functions: for Hobbes it intensifies conflict; for Locke it legitimizes popular sovereignty.
  • Trace Locke’s four limitations on sovereign power; they reappear almost verbatim in modern constitutions.
  • For exam essays: be ready to quote or paraphrase Hobbes’s “nasty, brutish, and short” and Locke’s “state of war” language regarding unjust rulers.