It

1. Comparision
Thomas Hobbes
•
•
John Locke
both agreed that a ruler of some sort appeared absolutely necessary for a country to thrive and flourish. Without a leader,
the country would fall away into nothing. In the political sense, the two philosophers agreed only on this subject.
However, they each believed that a different type of power should reside as supreme.
• Both of the two men’s philosophies included religion— both acknowledged the existence of God.
• Both agreed that God played only a small part in the foundation of their philosophies.
• Though both of these two men became known as philosophers, they had their own ideas of how a human worked
and lived
Hobbes influenced the people of his own time by refuting England’s parliament and France’s papal system. In the same
way, Locke affected the revolutionists of the United States. Locke’s idea of a people-run government held a great
influence over the United States Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, and Constitution. Both philosophers
impacted others, but the way in which they impacted them varied.
Hobbes thought that only one man, a king, should have the
right to govern the people. One king should make the decisions,
write the laws, and control the masses.
Locke felt that the people should somewhat run the
government. He believed that the people should have a say in
everything the government decided, including who ruled over
the country.
This philosopher also believed that if the government did not
uphold its end of the bargain, then the people had the right and
responsibility to overthrow the government.
Hobbes supposed that every human being needed to have
a master—by Hobbes’ point of view, the king—and he
likened humans to animals, both fearful and predatory. To
survive, humans must obey the commands of a ruler in
religious and government matters. People, Hobbes
thought, had an inner motivation revolving around pleasure
and hurt.
In contrast, Locke assumed that people could not come up
with new ideas out of nothing—each human could only
understand things which he or she had experienced. Locke
also believed that all humans come into the world as good,
independent, and equal.

2. Conclusion:They were both natural rights theorists and social contract theorists.
Natural rights theorists, meaning they both agreed that a person is born with the right to "life, liberty, and
property" (not "pursuit of happiness") because they were endowed by the creator. They both agreed it's the
government's job to protect these rights.
Social contract theorists meaning, the governed must give consent to the government in exchange for
protection. This means the citizens of the land must give up some of their rights in order for their rights to be
protected by the government. For example, I may have the right to free speech (arguably falling under the
natural right to liberty) but that doesn't mean the government is going to let me spread lies about someone else,
because that infringes of their rights (arguably, their right to liberty) in a social contract, in which people should
give up individual freedom to live in an organized society.
The main difference between the two is that Hobbes thought people were naturally brutish and brash and would
kill each other in a state of nature in order to get what they want. He thought that in a state of nature (a
theoretical state where there's no government), life would be short because people would kill each other. For
this reason, government had to be big and enforce laws strictly because people were too stupid and mean to do
the right thing and live in peace on their own. John Locke, on the other hand, thought people were born without
a good or bad spirit necessarily. He thought they were born as a blank slate (sometimes called "tabula rasa")
and society influenced whether they were good- or bad-souled.
(Rousseau, on the other side of things, thought people were born with good souls and society would only make
them bad.)
Hobbes’s contract was for a master. Locke’s contract was for a judge.
Hobbes seeing man as a creature of desire and Locke as one of reason. A second explanation for their

3. conclusions is their understanding of the nature of rights. Locke saw certain rights as independent of
government or the state, where as Hobbes in a sense saw them as coming from the state. Finally, both give
what they call laws of nature which ought to guide behaviour in the state of nature, but Hobbes laws are far less
secure than Locke’s, thus being another reason why inhabitants of Locke’s scenario would enjoy greater
security.
Prepared by Piao Rehman