Locke and Hobbes on The State of Nature -Jemma

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 Locke and Hobbes differ in their conception of the state of nature, which contributes to their differing understandings of what legislative power and sovereign power should entail. According to Locke, the State of Nature is a state of perfect equality and freedom in which all men are bound to preserve themselves. In the State of Nature, men can only do harm to one another for the purposes of reparation and restraint. Otherwise, Locke writes, “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty,or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker…they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure” (Locke 9). Thus, because all men are made equally by God, it would be unjust to bring harm to other men without reason, even in the state of nature.


Conversely, Hobbes argues that there is nothing just or unjust in the State of Nature, and that justice and injustice are constructs of society: “The desires, and other passions of man, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them” (Hobbes 103). In the State of Nature, therefore, men cannot act unjustly, because no laws have been created for them to defy.


Because Locke and Hobbes differ in their conceptions of the State of Nature, they disagree about the purpose of a ruling power. To Locke, the issue with the state of nature is not that it lacks laws and rights, but that those laws and rights are difficult to enforce without a common and impartial judge. Locke believes that legislative powers are put in place to help enforce the laws and rights of man that already exist within the state of nature: “God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men” (Locke 12). Because the purpose of the legislature is to enhance and enforce the laws that exist within the state of nature, says Locke, laws cannot be absolute or arbitrary. If a ruler did attempt to make laws arbitrarily or to exercise absolute power, man would be better off in the state of nature, as he would still have the ability to dispute injustices against him. Rulers are thus given the power to make laws only by the consent of the people for the purpose of their preservation: “for where-ever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer justice, it is still violence and injury” (Locke 6). The laws of the legislature, therefore, must conform to the laws of nature.


Hobbes disagrees with this understanding of rulers: he believes that because justice and injustice do not exist in the state of nature, men are inherently safer under any form of government. This includes an absolute and all-powerful monarch. Implicit in Hobbes’ understanding is the idea that men are powerless in the state of nature, as he writes that the people cannot elect a monarch because they cannot give what they do not possess (i.e. power). Locke, on the other hand, contends that the government derives its power from the people. Subsequently, while Locke believes that men still retain some power to defend and protect their rights in the state of nature, Hobbes writes that “The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of Forraigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them in such sort…is to conferre all their power and strength upon one man” (Hobbes 139-140). No rights or laws exist in the state of nature, says Hobbes, so men must be controlled and dictated completely.


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