For centuries, political institutions have always had a great impact on the resolution of conflicts, social interactions, and in shaping the economy and stability of a nation. In the early 1600s, many philosophers began a heated debate on whether nations should really be governed, and if so, who should govern the nation. This debate was as a result of the lack of equality and liberty that had been experienced under the leadership of their rulers. According to these philosophers, the government was not interested in the rights of the people. They whimsically ruled the nations forgetting that the nation comprised of people who had the right to have a say on certain matters. Philosophers, especially in Europe, then started arguing and recommending for other forms of democracy that considered the equality and liberty of the people.
Some of these famous philosophers were Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They both had very strong opinions and principles about liberty, equality, and the state of nature. The philosophers’ arguments on the state of nature were aimed at answering the question, “Why do we or, why should we, live under the rule of law?” (Douglass, 2016). This paper is a comparative analysis of the principles of the two philosophers (Hobbes and Rousseau) regarding their ideas on the state of nature. The analysis aims at coming to a conclusion on which philosopher had the best principles regarding the equality and liberty of the human race.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Hobbes’ Views and Principles
Thomas Hobbes was a famous philosopher from England who wrote his book The Leviathan shortly after the civil war broke out and King Charles I was beheaded. In his book, The Leviathan is a mythological creature that Hobbes uses to depict the nature of the government. The creature is a powerful sea monster that causes chaos in the sea and swallows ships. This symbolizes how the government is a powerful entity that imposes order on the people (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012).
According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a place where all humans are equal and are free to do whatever they like, or they need to do for survival. However, due to this freedom, the people live in fear of one another and the nation is susceptible to violence because everyone is free to do whatever it takes to survive; including fighting or killing for it. He says, “Self-preservation’ is our most fundamental desire; and if there is no law or authority to override our acting on this desire, no one to tell us how or how not we may try to stay alive” (Douglass, 2016). This shows that according to Hobbes, in the state of nature, the lack of power or rules to govern the people causes a sense of insecurity in the nation. Consequently, the people suffer from violence, death, and man ends up living a short, solitary, and poor life.
Hobbes believed that as much as the people had the right to equality and free will, the only way that people could live in harmony and without the fear of violence is when they appointed a supreme power to rule over them and impose peace on everyone. Borrowing from the English Contact, Hobbes asserted that the people in any given nation need to lay down and understand their rights to freedom and equality, but give the absolute power to sovereign leader who would guide the nation, enforce the laws, and ensure that the nation is peaceful, property possible, and liberty for all. This is what he called the “Social Contract” (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012).
Hobbes also believed that by giving all power to the king, the people would be making a wise decision because there would be political consistency and resolute in the nation. He also believed that since the social contract was between the people alone, and not the people and the king, once the people had chosen their king they had no right to revolt against him. He also warned the church not to meddle with the governance of the king because he feared that the interference of religion would cause a civil war (Douglass, 2016). Hobbes believed that the most important thing in the nation is improving the human conditions, natural rights, and liberty for the people. He believed that people should not worry about religion and the afterlife as imposed by the church, rather, their main concern was to obey their king, or choose to die (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012).
Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s Views and Principles
Rousseau was born in a different era from Hobbes. He was born in 1712, and during this time, the men were allowed to vote for the leader or government that they wanted. Rousseau was a self-educated philosopher who believed that human being were naturally good and that the society that they lived in played a big role in corrupting them (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012). In one of the many essays that he wrote, he claimed that in the state of nature, people were equal, free, and happy. However, once people started claiming property in the law of nature, war, inequality, and murder resulted. He argued that the rich, powerful people in the society stole land belonging to the poor common people and then fooled them into choosing them as their leaders. Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau believed that the social contract was not an agreement based on the willingness of the people but an atrocity and fraud against the people.
In another publication, he stated that ‘Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains” (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012). By this, he meant that as long as man has the right to freedom, he should never give up his natural right to any ruler or king. He acknowledged that the main problem in the state of nature is that protecting the people’s liberty, property and natural rights and still let them be free was hard. He, therefore, proposed solution for this problem by advising the people to get a social contract just like Hobbes had suggested, but this time, instead of giving all rights to the king, they would give them to the community, which would then come up with laws that targeted the “public good” of the whole community. In doing so, the people would be putting their general will into practice (Douglass, 2016).
Rousseau believed in direct democracy whereby everyone in the community got to decide on the laws governing the nation. Anyone who disobeyed these laws was to be forced to obey these laws as long as he was a member of the community and resided there. He believed that this form of democracy would help the community in ensuring that justice, security, liberty and property was enjoyed by all the people and not just the king or the wealthy people in a community (Philip and Pelczynski, 2012). Rousseau believed that power should reside within the people and that the community should have a civil religion whereby; they believe and trust in God, but concentrated more on following the social contract that religion because peace and democracy would be hard to achieve when everyone believed that religion damned them.
Conclusion
In summary, both philosophers had great principles and ideas of what the state of nature should be like. However, in my opinion, both philosophers had a few shortcomings in their principle. For example, according to Hobbes, human beings are free individuals with natural rights. However, he still believes that people should give up all their rights to the king, obey him, or die. This does not depict equality and liberty at all. Also, Rousseau’s principles as good as they seem, are impractical and vague, for example, how would such a government work? A government that got orders from everyone in the community on what is wrong or right? I believe that the best state of nature would be a combination of the few of both philosophies. A state of nature where the people had a say in the policies and laws of the country, but still have a leader and government to oversee everything. This would ensure an ultimate state of nature where equality and liberty of the people are respected.
References
Philip, M., & Pelczynski, Z. A. (2012). The Sovereign People, the Law, and the Citizen. Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau , 243-261).
Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will and the Passions, written by Robin Douglass. (2016). Hobbes Studies , 29(2). 210-214.
