Hobbes And Locke Essay

Ben Ekeroth

IR Discussion Response 2

The natural conditions in which political institutions are formed, and the processes which form

them, were the subjects of study for enlightenment era political philosophers like Hobbes and Locke.

Hobbes and Locke were both investigating why governments were formed in the first place, and the

circumstances in which they persist. Kant, on the other hand, in his work on the Perpetual Peace,

argued the circumstances which perpetual peace between nations would require in practice. In this

context, Hobbes and Locke could be regarded as studying the circumstances and practices through

which individual people submit themselves to a social order, a government, in order to ensure their

continued security and a variety of other

needs, while Kant is seeking to study the same process on the
international scale.
All cases require an analysis of how sovereignty is wielded, reorganized, and relinquished to
achieve security and some form of social hegemony to protect the ability to form social institutions.
Often in political theory, the nation, or other sovereign entity, is considered as an idealized unit which
comes into existence under the agreement of individuals, but disregards the conditions in which they
were formed, or sovereignty was reorganized, as unimportant or preliminary to the discussion of how
political institutions operate. The article by Grovogui on the sovereignty of African nations shows that
the question of political origins is in practice an important subject for consideration. In theory, the
articles by Hobbes, Locke, and Kant highlight a hierarchy of such 'reorganizations' of sovereignty
which are recapitulated on each level, beginning with the submission of the child to the parents, the
relinquishing of individual sovereignty to society in the formation of a nation, and finally the deferral
of power to international institutions in the quest for international peace.
In his Leviathan, Hobbes accounts for the development of government as a method for
individuals to leverage the self-serving nature of everybody in society to enforce the maintenance of a
social institution to protect their interests. For Hobbes, the 'natural' state of human affairs is a state of
war in which everybody is compelled to fight to protect their security, and security cannot be ensured
without hegemony. This is Bull's international anarchy on the level of the individual, if social
institutions behave like the individuals of which they are comprised, the same argument can be taken
into international politics. By establishing a government, individuals can ensure their security and the
retention of their property. Locke is more concerned with the process with which a political society is
formed. Locke argues that in a political society, individuals independently agree to submit themselves
to the will of the majority, thereby sacrificing their sovereignty for the security and benefits of the
community.

The political theory of Hobbes applies more readily to the question of why individuals coalesce

into communities under the rule of any institution at all, even a monarchical or dictatorial rule. Locke,

on the other hand, applies to the theoretical process by which a democratic society forms. In arguing on

behalf of democratic political societies, Locke encounters an objection in the form of political realities;

which is that rarely have independent groups of individuals ever assembled and agreed to submit

themselves to the will of a majority, thereby forming a new democratic state. Locke counters by

introducing the relationship between the family unit and government. In the family unit, the children

are raised under their parents hegemonic rule, and they have no knowledge of the origins of their

power. In the same sense, individuals are raised subject to governments which have no knowledge of

their origins. Most likely, Locke argues, the propensity for monarchical or dynastic rules stems from

the familiar patriarchal power structures of the family unit. It is this ambiguity in origins which

releases
individuals to assembled independently, even in the face of their current governance, and formally
submit themselves to the rule of the majority, thereby establishing a legitimate democratic political
society.
In these theories of Hobbes and Locke, the reorganization of sovereignty is realized on different
scales, with distinctions made between those with and without ambiguity in their agreement to
surrender individual independence. In Hobbe's view, individuals submit themselves to a sovereign
government, even a capricious ruler, in exchange for security. Locke, however, argues that although
this is typical case, it is clear that the agreement is not really a social contract between independent
individuals, with a formal submission of sovereignty lending legitimacy to the government. The origins
of a society under a monarch is like that of a child under the supreme authority of, traditionally, the
father. Kant takes the reorganization of sovereignty to the international level, and Grovogui returns the
international regime to its origins to determine the faults in its operation.
Kant seeks to determine the conditions which must be met for the foundations of a perpetual
international peace. Kant argues that the origins of the peace must have the proper foundation, in the
sense that peace with a stipulation for war cannot be lasting, and peace between nations with some
form of coercion cannot last either. The process of securing perpetual peace between nations is similar
to the peace which is ensured between individuals by relinquishing sovereignty to the state. As Locke
had argued, the agreement for peace must be a contract between independent individuals agreeing to
surrender some independence to ensure their security. Kant recognizes that this process must provide
for the continued agreement between national parties to be governed on an international scale while
retaining some independence in their affairs, in the same way that Locke argues the government of the
nation must respect the same rights for the individuals of which it is comprised. The distinction
between perpetual peace and conditional peace, like those of treaties rather that pacific federations, is
of a political nature similar to the distinction between nations formed out of agreement between
independent parties and those raised under a patriarchal institution. The peace which cannot last is the
peace continued from ambiguous origins, peace through patriarchal hegemony rather than contract.
The questions of origins and patriarchal hegemony on an international level is of practical
importance in the context of imperialism and European intervention, as in the paper of Grovogui.
Grovogui shows that the 'failure' of some African nations is not just a result of imperialist intervention,
but also from enforcing Westphalian concepts of sovereignty on the newly independent nations.
Grovogui argues that the process of decolonization forced Westphalian notions of sovereignty onto
groups of independent people without themselves being able to coalesce into a sovereign government
under their own terms. The post-Reformation political crisis is the origins of the modern European
political structure and the origins of their processes for peace and sovereignty. Sovereignty in Europe
starting with the Westphalian peace comes from unambiguous international origins, where the powers
of Europe decided the terms of their peace as independent nations without patriarchal intervention.
Decolonialization, on the other hand, provided no such opportunities. With the Westphalian model of
peace as the guide, European powers patriarchally enforced the standards of sovereignty which they
held to be unassailable. On both the national and international level, a continued contract for
submission of sovereignty to the newly formed nation by individuals and to the international order by
nations could not arise in a manner suitable for an efficient government and international peace.
As Locke argued for the case of independent individuals finding themselves governed by
patriarchal powers of ambiguous origins, it may be necessary to reassert the sovereign contract between
independent individuals in order to achieve the governance and peace which the international order
seeks. In this case, citizens of 'failed' states, and 'failed' states themselves, may need to dramatically
renegotiate the context of their sovereignty on their own terms, in spite of the international order, in
order to achieve a functioning government and maintain international peace in the long run. What this
could mean on the international level is reevaluating the standards of sovereignty which are accepted
by the international order, and accepting nationalistic policies for 'developing' nations, or maybe
reconsidering the principal of intervention in 'humanitarian' cases, or cases of civil war. Although the
international regime may not accept a temporary lapse in the international order to achieve it, it may be
that international peace is not attainable without the renegotiation of sovereignty by nations formed
under 'patriarchal' conditions, so that the social contract is established on their terms.