1. Hobbes,
Locke,
and
Rousseau

2. Learning Goal
• Describe how enlightenment
philosophers contributed to the
birth of modern nations.
• Analyze the impact of
philosophers’ on revolutions
[United States, French]

3. Hobbes
• Wrote Leviathan in 1651, near the end of
the English Civil War. Seeing the
violence and behavior of people gave him
a dim view of human nature.
• He posits a State of Nature (SON), a
state of affairs in which man is at his
most natural.
• The SON for Hobbes is a violent place,
one of “war of every man against every
man.” So the SON is also a state of
war.

4. • This state of war isn’t necessarily active
fighting. It’s just the inclination to
fight and to take preemptive action
against others.
• In fact, the SON is such that
cooperation among people is nearly
impossible because nobody will keep
their agreements – it’s not in your
interests to keep contracts; it is in
your interests not to keep contracts;
and there’s nobody to keep you
honest.

5. • This preemptiveness is often expressed as game
theory’s prisoner’s dilemma.
• Let’s say there are two prisoners who were
accomplices in a crime and they’ve made a pact
to stay silent and not rat out the other person.
They’re being interrogated separately by the
police so neither knows what the other person is
going to do.
• If he rats out his friend and his friend stays
silent, he’ll go free and his friend will do 10
years (and vice-versa).
• If both stay silent, they’ll each do six months.
• If both rat out the other one, they’ll each do
two years.

6. • So if his partner stays silent, his
best option is to rat him out. If his
partner betrays him, his best
option is again to rat him out.
Either way, his best (and rational)
move is to betray his partner.

7. • In the same way, in the SON, nobody will ever keep
their agreements because it’s in their best interests
not to do so.
• This can be expressed in the following chart with the
left number in each cell being player one’s preferred
choice. 1 is most preferred, 4 is least preferred.
Player 2
Don't
Cooperate cooperate
Cooperate 3,3 4,1
Player
1 Don't
1,4 2,2
cooperate

8. • In the SON, everyone also has the right of nature,
which is that you may do whatever you see fit to
protect your interests, especially your life.
• Everyone is also roughly equal. Sure there are bigger
guys, but they have to sleep sometime. So everyone’s
equal in the sense that anyone can kill anyone else.

9. • For Hobbes, the only way to get out the SON is to have
a sovereign, somebody who will enforce contracts and
punish wrongdoers.
• You must form a social contract with others around
you in which you collectively agree to give up your
right of nature to someone.
• This sovereign will exercise violence on your
behalf should you be wronged. He will create
laws and enforce contracts.
• Only when there is a sovereign do you have a
commonwealth and is there such things as justice
and injustice.

10. Locke
• For Locke, the SON isn’t the nasty place it is for
Hobbes. The SON is not equal to a state of war.
• In the SON, all people have perfect freedom to do what
they want, but are still bound by God-given laws of
nature. Moreover, everyone is equal because God
made them so.

11. • Everyone, being equal with equal freedom, may also
punish those who transgress the natural law.
• A state of war exists when somebody is aggressive
towards another in seeking to take away the victim’s
freedom (which could be enslavement, taking property,
or his life) and the victim defends himself (and he has a
right to this self-defense).
• For Locke, the SON is different from a state of war,
the former being nice and friendly, the latter not so
much.
• The SON can become a state of war, but it is not
necessarily a state of war like it was for Hobbes.

12. • So people form a social contract to create a sovereign
and get out of the SON.
• Though the SON is a rosy place with lots of freedom,
people are willing to give it up in order to have some
security from aggressors.
• That is, the SON is to be preferred to civil society,
but the uncertainty that a state of war could develop
is too risky and causes heartburn.
• People form societies in order to protect their
property: their life, liberty, and property.
• People may rebel, though, if the sovereign is not
keeping up his end of the social contract. If he’s not
keeping up hid end, the social contract is dissolved and
people may rebel. Hobbes didn’t think people could
rebel.

13. Rousseau
• The SON is one with freedom and force creates rights
while obedience to that force is turned into duty.
• He doesn’t much like Hobbes’s social contract in which
a person gives up all his freedom and power to a
sovereign. Then the person who’s the sovereign has all
the power and everybody else has none.
• People typically don’t interact much with each other,
but over time in the SON, interaction and competition
is unavoidable. The obstacles to living also become
greater than the resources. Men have to join together
or die.
• The social contract is made among all the participants.
The sovereign is the popular will of the collective whole
of which all individuals are a part.

14. • Individuals help make the general will and agree to
abide by what it says.
• If they don’t, they will be compelled by the majority to
do so. As Rousseau says, “that whoever refuses to
obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the
whole body. This means nothing less than that he will
be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by
giving each citizen to his country, secures him against
all personal dependence.”