According to Jean Jacques Rousseau, human beings are bestowed with the blessings of freedom during their individual genesis on this fruitful planet, but this natural freedom is immensely circumscribed as it’s exchanged for the civil liberties of the State. He indicated that the supplanting of natural freedom is necessary for the obtainment of greater power for the greater collective community, but the prospect of obtaining superlative capabilities comes with the price of constraints. Yet this notion of natural freedom conflicts with Thomas Hobbes rendition on the state of nature because he illustrates that nature, interface through savagery. According to Hobbes, mankind has endorsed and embraced natures temperament, because this system of truculency and servility that nature orbits adversely affects the nature of mankind, resulting in mankinds affinity for greed, and brutal ambition. Inspite of their conflicting perspectives on the state of nature, both support and explicate on the idea that the preservation and proliferation of mankind as a whole is best achieved through their belief, and withholding the policies of a social contract. The intention of Leviathan is to create this perfect government, which people eagerly aspires to become apart of, at the behest of individual relinquishing their born rights. This commonwealth, the aggregation of people for the purposes of preventing unrest and war, is predicated upon laws that prohibit injustice through the implementation of punishment. Essentially in the mind of both Rousseau and Hobbes, constraints are necessary for human beings to be truly free under the covenants and contracts applied to the civil state at which mankind interface through. All of the constituents in a society w... ... middle of paper ... ...ns. Hobbes, insist that the nature of mankind is a state of savagery if left to its own device and the amalgamation of people under the confines of law allows people to seek the peace they thirst for. On the contrary Rousseau advocates that people are a naturally social species, and the submission to a greater good of the community by parting with their born rights is paramount to the superfluidity of the society. Both essentially agree that giving up natural right for the civil liberties within the state is a necessary exchange for the preservation of both the individual and the state itself. Works Cited Hobbes, Thomas, and C. B. Macpherson. Leviathan ; Edited with an Introduction by C.B. MacPherson. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968. Print. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and G. D. H. Cole. On the Social Contract. New York: Dover Publications, 2003. Print.
The Social Contract and the Leviathan by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes, respectively, contextualizes man’s struggle to escape a brutish, short life within the state of nature. Man is confined in a lawless world where the words mine and thine are interchangeable, and where there is no regard for private possession; this indifference even extends to the right over someone’s body. And while there are those who revel in freedom from the synthetic chains of law, the reality of life in the state of nature- a life of constant war and distrust for one’s neighbor- trumps any short lived joys or monetary gains. Although it may seem like there is no hope for man in this state, Hobbes and Rousseau presents us with a way to escape this tragic
Hobbes takes both principles and creates the Leviathan.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Social Contract and Discourses. trans. by G.D.H. Cole. New York: Dutton, 1950.
In The Leviathan Thomas Hobbes argues for the establishment of a society that does not contain the elements of its own demise. Hobbes views civil war as a society’s ultimate demise, and the only way to avoid it is for the citizens initially to submit to an absolute political authority. For Hobbes, civil war is inevitable in every type of government except an absolute government. In order to sustain this absolute government, the citizens not only must submit to the absolute political authority, but they must also not partake in activities that actively undermine the absolute political authority’s power. For these reasons, it is clear that Hobbes believes in political obedience and its ability to influence the peace of a society. Furthermore,
The notion of forcing citizens to be free is a product of Rousseau’s version of the social contract. While Rousseau is more optimistic about the state of nature than Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, he still recognizes that it may become necessary for men to exit the state of nature and unite under a sovereign. When this time comes, Rousseau contends, men must enter a social contract with one another. The social contract is imperative to Rousseau since he views it to be the best means of ensuring that alliances between men do not come at the expense of the freedom enjoyed in the state of nature. According to this contract, each man agrees to put the community ahead of himself and to obey the general will, or the will of all that is centered on the collective good. The contract also establishes the sovereign, a living body comprised of every member of the social contract, to enforce the decrees of the general will.
Rousseau, however, believed, “the general will by definition is always right and always works to the community’s advantage. True freedom consists of obedience to laws that coincide with the general will.”(72) So in this aspect Rousseau almost goes to the far extreme dictatorship as the way to make a happy society which he shows in saying he, “..rejects entirely the Lockean principle that citizens possess rights independently of and against the state.”(72)
In Leviathan, Hobbes makes a very convincing case for the conditions in the sate of nature, so much so that in the literature a multitude of academics on the topic of Hobbes start by seeking to discredit his theory of the state of nature and the conditions within it, but ultimately conclude that the conditions of the state of nature are actually quite convincing. They are usually persuaded by the application of game theory to modern society. The conditions, which are being referred to primarily relate to the state of ‘war of all against all’, which underpins perhaps Hobbes’ most famous quote in which he says mans life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Whilst the idea of war of all against all is the primary
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Edition, 2010, 1651 Original
Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau had very clear opinions on the production, the purpose, and the purview of a sovereign. Hobbes’ sovereign was singular, like a monarch, Rousseau’s was collective, like a direct democracy. Both considered significant the concepts of human nature and natural rights as applied to a sovereign. I will first explore how these thinkers’ sovereigns emerged from their States of Nature, following a procedural argument as to why there was a need for a sovereign, and what that sovereign was therefore meant to do. It is critical to comprehend from where these sovereigns came in order to fully understand the implications of their creation. Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s conclusions on the sovereign may at first seem grossly
Political theory places a large focus on Thomas Hobbes and his concept of the Leviathan. This theory is that existing in the “state of nature” creates a life that is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, so people should instead give up part of their liberty and join a leviathan (state) that will serve their best interests. This concept places an utmost importance in the state and calls for the necessity of citizens to have blind faith in said institution while dispelling anything that lies beyond. It also creates an inherent othering and moral hierarchy that labels everything that is not “in” as evil. This dichotomy is a colonial ideology. It creates a paradox that the concepts of “uncivilized” and “civilized” cannot inherently exist without
Thomas Hobbes is a philosophical thinker that is notoriously known for being born with fear, it is because of this fear that he contemplates the lack of a society, or restrictions on individuals. The state of nature, in which all individuals are equal and have rights to everything, a state in which an individual lives in constant fear and cannot fulfill any self-preservation of their own life, at least, not for an extended period of time. Hobbes provides insight into why individuals prefer to escape the state of nature, and how the escape is accomplished within the Leviathan, including Social Contract Theory and the formation of a society.
At the core of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan rests one fundamental value of a society, from which
In The Social Contract philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau discuss their differences on human beings’ place of freedom in political societies. Locke’s theory is when human beings enter society we tend to give up our natural freedom, whereas Rousseau believes we gain civil freedom when entering society. Even in modern times we must give up our natural freedom in order to enforce protection from those who are immoral and unjust.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacque. The Social Contract. Tr. G.D.H. Cole. Accessed 15 July, 2011. Available from http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm
In summary, there are three differences between their descriptions of the state of nature. First, Hobbes believes that nature is like war, full of danger and fear. And Rousseau believed that the state of nature was good, and that human beings would cooperate with each other to survive. Secondly, Hobbes believes that people will be happier when they are out of their natural state, and the formation of political societies as a need for stability, peace and order by getting rid of natural state. Rousseau considers the formation of political societies a need from growing population and changing life conditions. Rousseau believed that this was the cause of inequality, because human beings became