Differences Between Locke And Hobbes

The state of nature is like being in a zombie movie. It sucks. This is the plot for the popular series “The Walking Dead”. No one can be trusted, and those we do are held to a verbal and at times armed contract, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine”. In forming these contracts, we give up our freedom for protection and security. This is the thinking of 16th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. Pessimistic, he believed that all human acts were motivated by self-interest and the quest for power. Governments act as a third party, they wield all the power. This keeps two warring individuals or even states inline. In a battle between two, the third arises to separate and govern the two. This is a broken system that all current governments are derived …show more content…
John Locke, a 17th century philosopher, states that we form social contracts, “to help provide for ourselves and those we are responsible for.” According to Locke, in his “Second Treatise”, the state of nature is to take care of one’s own. No one is island, and one’s family is not more important than one’s safety. His state of nature, as opposed to Hobbes, is of a moral state, one where we are all born as humans. Because we are human, we therefore have God-given natural rights; the right to life, health, liberty and processions. Locke’s rights derive their power from God rather than man. Therefore rights are God-given and must be respected as such. He further claims that we have a natural right to any part of nature, provided we have worked with it, on it, or for it. Possession does not come from inheriting a lot of money, but rather from how hard one has worked. Therefore, it is a merit based system of wealth. Granted, Locke sets limitations to this claiming, “Anyone can through his labor come to own as much as he can use in a beneficial way before it spoils; anything beyond this is more than his share and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy.”(ch5) This presupposes that there is an abundance in the state of nature, that there is more than enough to go around and that everyone plays by the same …show more content…
While a government imposing laws might in theory level the playing field, in reality, a law on paper does not automatically translate into compliance and obeying the law. This is where sensitive issues come into play and break Hobbes’s and Locke’s ideas. There are many piracy laws that prohibit the downloading and usage of an artist’s music without their written consent, but what if the artist has more than enough wealth to the point that it begins to spoil. That is to say, they are extremely wealthy and hoard their money. While it might be a part of themselves that they put their labor into, it doesn’t change the fact that its accumulation is spoiling and not being shared with others. There is no wrong side to this argument, but maybe pirating music from a band that has only a few pennies to their name isn’t such a kind thing to do. This only feeds Hobbes idea of a selfish state of nature, and in a Lockian system, the greater good doesn’t benefit from it. For Locke, it only goes back to the notion that a person’s labor is a part of themselves, and in a capitalist environment, they can barter their product for whatever they deem as reasonable. If they didn’t benefit from their labors, not only is that a form a slavery (which is bad to Locke), but discourages innovation and progression forward. If it is anything I have learned in my twenty years of life, is that no two people live by the same set of rules. We each have our own agenda and way of