≽ Dichotomy Between Hobbes and Locke
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, two names now found to be iconic due to their theories on the subject of Social Contract, but each establishing the means of this status through vastly different ideas and suggestions relating to how they see the nature of man and the powers that govern him.
≽ Overview on John Locke
John Locke, much like Thomas Hobbes, was a Natural Law theorist who proposed a radical new approach to the theory of Social Contract. He believed that human nature was often good or honorable by default, and from this believed that we as humans innately know what is right or wrong.
Locke seemed to know and appreciate that the world around us and how we attribute names and feelings towards the things filling it can become complicated and blurred. Although something is called evil doesn't necessarily mean it truly is in reality or even another's eyes.
Using these beliefs about our Natural Law and Order, Locke proposed a theory on Social Contract that was mainly focused around the people, or the society itself giving power to the state.
≽ Overview of Thomas Hobbes
On the entire other end of the spectrum from John Locke, we have the Social Contract theorist by the name of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes' view upon the world was extremely grim compared to the view that Locke held. Hobbes believed that men just by their nature were never social animals, and that nearly everything that is "civil" or "ordered" for men by their Natural Law were required to be given to them and directed by the State.
No man alone had rights, property, or even true knowledge unless the state allowed it to them within Hobbes' view.
≽ My Personal Choice of Social Contract
Personally, I find John Locke's view and theory of Social Contract to be the one I can most closely relate and agree to. Hobbes' Social Contract theory I believe is entirely overshadowed by his overtly, and unnecessarily pessimistic worldview and state of reality. Although I entirely agree that one should not simply believe that all humans are good in nature as this will just lead to naivety, it is also quite rash and abhorrent to think entirely opposite as well.
Perhaps it is hard for me to see this issue differently as I was born American, and so much of our Governmental practice stems from Locke, but just from the sense I feel as an individual and a human, I see Hobbes' ideology and Social Contract as an overwhelming belittlement. Within his view, I can never rely upon myself to know what I feel is right or wrong, I cannot choose for myself what I believe to be good or evil, and I most of all, only have the "right" to live due to my submission to a singular power.
This view is simply false, and many of its premises indicate as such. From the dawn of man, we have formed and sustained actual societies without any central form of government or power. It is not by some overarching might that we were directed and given the success that our race has seen. It was from tangible social interaction and the conversing of ideas and beliefs that we were able to display such amazing adaptation to our surroundings.
What Hobbes seems to forget is that people were not created from a state, but that a state was created from people. Without people there would never be a society, without a society there would never be a need to govern, and without the need to govern, there will never be a state.
The fact that Locke is able to realize that what is given the name "Good" or "Evil" in such a subjective world is based upon complicated biases, is already a telling sign for me upon the nature of this choice upon Social Contract. Government and society should always have a contract, I agree, but one that is fair and beneficial for both, compared to the absolutely parasitic and appalling one put forth under Hobbes' ideals.
Times always change, and with those changes a whole new ensemble of problems, events, and conflicts. Many of our past answers to these problems will no longer work or be realistically possible given new forms of culture or society. Without the ability to transform and adapt to these situations along with the people, a Government or State will crumble. Again, another ideal that Locke accounts for, while Hobbes merely continues to strengthen his stance in blind belief towards the State.
With Locke, everything still seems to have a purpose, a given task that assists and strengthens another while also realizing the individual. But with Hobbes, we will always be just another cog within the machine. Cold, heartless, and void of knowledge; just grinding away until we give out.
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