THE STATE-OF-NATURE TEACHINGS OF HOBBES AND LOCKE 
                                           
                                      By Jeffrey Pratt 
              
              
              
             In the Winter 2002 semester at this university, I took Political Science 150, the introductory 
             course on comparative government. The text that we used was Countries and Concepts, by 
             Michael Roskin. This text covered the domestic politics of several key nation-states, such as 
             Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Iran, and others, and it contained 
             little  sidebars  or  feature  boxes  on  the  history,  geography,  political  culture,  and  political 
             philosophies associated with each state. 
                  During a particular class period, our professor gave us an in-class activity in which we 
             were to select two of these feature boxes from the text and comment on them in a quick, one-
             page essay. I chose one on the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and another on that of 
             John Locke. In the box on Locke, as I recall, great care was taken to differentiate the Lockean 
             state of nature from the Hobbesian. But when I read the two accounts of these philosophers’ 
             state of nature teachings, I saw little difference between them. I decided, then, to write that. 
             When we received our papers a week later or so, mine had a comment from the professor 
             which said, in  substance,  “Interesting  hypothesis,  but  Hobbes’  and  Locke’s  state of  nature 
             teachings are generally thought to be different because of Hobbes’ account of it as being nasty 
             and short, and Locke’s account of it as generally nice, except for the protection of property.” 
                  I  must say that, now having read some of Hobbes’ and Locke’s writings, I feel a bit 
             vindicated in the assertion that I made that day. For when we look closely at the state of nature 
             teachings  of  Hobbes  and  Locke,  we  will  find  that,  while  they  appear  to  be  considerably 
             different on the surface, they are, in fact, not so different in their implications. 
              
              
             “SOLITARY, POOR, NASTY, BRUTISH, AND SHORT” 
              
             Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a monarchist; he had no qualms with strong sovereigns as 
             such.  He  was  undoubtedly  influenced  by  the  contemporary  English  Civil  War—a  bloody, 
             anarchic time in England—when he developed his theory of human nature. In the beginning 
             of Leviathan, he lays out his observations of man: 
              
                  For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why 
                  may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) 
                  have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the 
                  joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the artificer? (p. 
                  124) 
                   
             Human beings, then, are mere artifice; they are machines. Life is no more than the movement 
             of  these  machines. Further, our senses are caused by “the external body, or object, which 
             presseth  the  organ  proper  to  each  sense,  either  immediately,...or  mediately,”  and  these 
             pressures induce reactions in the inner organs, such as the brain or heart, which constitute the 
           senses (p. 125). “And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye, makes us fancy a light; and 
           pressing the ear, produceth a din; so do the bodies also we see, or hear, produce the same by 
           their strong, though unobserved action.” Imaginations, then, or dreams, and even memories, 
           are echoes of these senses, decaying with time (p. 126). 
              We see from this that Hobbes takes a very materialistic view of man and of nature. It is 
           true that he claims that “there is no doubt, but God can make unnatural apparitions: But that 
           he does it so often, as men need to fear such things, more than they fear the stay, or change, of 
           the course of nature, which he also can stay, and change; is no point of Christian faith” (pp. 
           128–9). Nominally, then, he might believe in God, but Hobbes unmistakably claims a very 
           limited, rare, extraordinary God—a God who largely (or even entirely) stays out of nature. 
              Hobbes, then, sees that men are calculating (Ch. 5; pp. 136-140), sensuous automatons, 
           interested only in their own good. He also finds: 
            
              [n]ature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that though there be found one 
              man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned 
              together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon 
              claim to himself any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he (p. 169), 
               
           And seeing that the there are, in human nature, “three principal causes of quarrel,” viz. “first, 
           competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory[-seeking]”, Hobbes deduces that, in the state 
           of  nature,  i.e.,  the  state  that  men  would  exist  in  without  government,  “[w]hatsoever...is 
           consequent to a state of war” would also be consequent to the state of nature. The state of 
           nature would be a state of war between men: 
            
              In  such  condition,  there  is  no  place  for  industry;  because  the  fruit  thereof  is  uncertain:  and 
              consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported 
              by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much 
              force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and 
              which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, 
              nasty, brutish, and short (p. 171). 
               
              Hobbes finds this state to be so abominable as to justify nearly anything to prevent it. 
           Thus, his Leviathan is born out of a theoretical “social contract” entered into by the natural 
           man with other natural men; it is a contract founded in reason and self-interest, formed to 
           escape the uncertain, terrible state of nature. Leviathan is, and must be, the absolute authority 
           on Earth, from which there can be absolutely no appeal to any other authority. The subjects of 
           Leviathan must obey the will of the sovereign. Only in defense of the natural right to self-
           preservation  does  Hobbes  justify  disobedience  to  Leviathan.  But  in  all  other  aspects, 
           Leviathan is ultimate and absolute, and must be, because living in the state of nature would be 
           much worse. 
            
            
           THE LOCKEAN SOCIAL CONTRACT 
            
           The immediate fate of Hobbes’ work was relegation to the bonfires of academic disapproval; 
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                             and personally, Hobbes found himself branded an atheist . But John Locke was, in some 
                             respects,  even more radical than Hobbes. For while Hobbes’ theory of the social contract 
                             supports the idea of absolute monarchy (without using the theory of divine right), Locke 
                             categorically rejects all monarchy. 
                                       Locke’s natural man is not—at least, not apparently—the wildly competitive, diffident, 
                             glory-seeking  automaton that Hobbesian man is, which, when brought into being among 
                             other Hobbesian men, produce the nasty state of war that only the collective formation of a 
                             sovereign can avert. The state of nature, for Locke, is “a state of perfect freedom” for men “to 
                             order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the 
                             bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave, or depending on the will of any other man.” 
                             It is also, somewhat like Hobbes’ state of nature, “[a] state...of equality, wherein all the power 
                             and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (p. 312). 
                                       But though this state is one of liberty, is not unboundedly free: 
                              
                                       [Man] has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some 
                                       nobler use that its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, 
                                       which obliges every one: And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that 
                                       being  equal  and  independent,  no  one  ought  to  harm  one  another  in  his  life,  health,  liberty,  or 
                                       possessions. For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker; all the 
                                       servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his 
                                       property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not another’s pleasure. And being 
                                       furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such 
                                       subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy another, as if we were made for one another’s 
                                       uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. (p. 313). 
                                        
                             There is, then, a law of nature, which is reason, which, when considering the divine origins of 
                             man, teaches the mind that all human beings are equal and, therefore, have no right to abuse 
                             any other human being. Locke continues the argument by saying that while man is “bound to 
                             preserve himself,” he ought “to preserve the rest of mankind,” as long as “his own preservation 
                             comes not into competition,” and that this, too, is evident in reason (p. 313). 
                                       And  since  man  has,  inherent  in  himself,  the  right  to  preserve  himself  (and  his 
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                             property, which Locke views in some ways as an extension of the individual self ), he has, also 
                             within himself, the original powers of government. That is, in the state of nature, prior to any 
                             government, the rational law of nature evinces that the executive and legislative powers rest 
                             with the individual himself, founded on his right to preserve his life and property, and based 
                             on the notion that no man is to live at the pleasure of another. Thus, in the state of nature, 
                             whenever anyone declares himself “to quit the principles of nature” (p. 313) by intruding upon 
                             another’s life, liberty, or property, putting himself above another, such a person becomes no 
                             longer  subject  to  such  principles  and  loses  their  protection.  The  offended  party  then,  by 
                                                                                     
                             1   We have already seen some of the somewhat ambivalent statements made by Hobbes with regard to God and 
                                 religion. Judgment of his religious views shall be left to the reader. 
                             2   The Lockean account of private property is essentially a labor theory of value: nature provides raw materials, 
                                 nearly useless in themselves, which, when imputed with the labor of the individual, become the property of 
                                 that individual and hence have value. This labor theory would be supported later by Adam Smith and, still 
                                 later, it would be used to attack capitalism by Karl Marx. There are, however, other theories of value, such as 
                                 the marginal utility theory of value, articulated by the Austrian economist Carl Menger (1840–1921) in his 
                                 Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre in 1871. 
                             reason of the law of nature, possesses the right to execute justice against the offender. This is 
                             not  justice  in  any  institutional  sense;  it  is  justice  in  the  sense  of  self-defense  or  self-
                             preservation. 
                                       Now, such an offense Locke calls the state of war. It is, to him, an unnatural state, i.e., it 
                             is separate and distinct from the state of nature. Whenever the state of war exists, then, the 
                             rational law of nature is violated, the offender stands outside of the protection of that law, and 
                             the offended party has the just right to exact retribution or take preventative measures. Once 
                             that matter is resolved, the state of war ceases, and the state of nature resumes. 
                                       But in this state of nature, the protection of property and life is handled by every 
                             individual, and it may become too difficult to continually execute that protection. Therefore, 
                             Locke argues, men enter into a social contract, delegating that responsibility to a government 
                             from among themselves, while they retain every other right. This, to Locke, is the origin of 
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                             legitimate government.  
                                       It is principally because of this that Locke categorically opposed monarchy, since the 
                             monarch is someone against whom there is no secular power to appeal to. The monarch 
                             places  himself  outside  of  the  rule  of  reason  and  nature  by  virtue  of  his  very  position. 
                             Contemporary  monarchies,  then,  to  Locke,  were  not  civil  societies  at  all,  but  various 
                             manifestations of the state of war. The law of reason, then, demanded that the state of war be 
                             rectified by resistance, separation or rebellion. 
                              
                              
                             NATURE AND WAR 
                              
                             Though Hobbes and Locke begin with different premises about human nature, they do come 
                             to rather similar conclusions, though it may not be readily apparent. Hobbes saw that “pre-
                             social” or pre-governmental human beings would invariably lead to an anarchic state of war, 
                             with one against all, and that life would be fearful and short, and civilization would be nearly 
                             impossible. Locke, however, sees a law of reason and nature that pervades human existence, 
                             and sees human beings as aware, albeit perhaps dimly, of that law. Thus Locke’s state of nature 
                             is not anarchic. But it can, sometimes, yield the state of war, wherein the rights of one human 
                             being are endangered or actively violated by another. 
                                       With Lockean man constantly securing his property and liberty against his neighbors, 
                             against the possibility of attack, one cannot help but wonder whether this would lead to an 
                             existence that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” in which, with time, man becomes 
                             unable to trust his neighbors and comes to see them all as competitors and enemies. Perhaps, 
                             then, a Lockean state of nature will, with time, tend to degenerate into the Hobbesian state of 
                             war of each against all, unless that state of war is prevented by the institution of the social 
                                                                                     
                             3   While David Hume could find no such example of this in history, or, at least, no significant example of it, and 
                                 therefore claimed that the social contract theories of his predecessors were untenable, the creation of the 
                                 United States is, in some ways, a modern example. Hume died in 1776; the Articles of Confederation were 
                                 agreed to by the Continental Congress in 1777, and they were ratified in 1781. The Constitution of the United 
                                 States was ratified in 1787. Of course, since the founding of the United States was influenced heavily by John 
                                 Locke, and therefore succeeded him in time, Hume might have argued that that event would not be a very 
                                 good example of a natural, pre-Lockean social contract.