Political Theorists Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau

Political Theorists Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau

It is commonly said that a man is originally born equal and that society intervenes in one way or another to produce a new social hierarchy that was not present in the "state of nature". Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau have supported this statement. Although their ideologies occasionally clashed, and they came from distinctly distinct epochs in the course of political development, Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's basic contentions address some important and similar points. In both Locke's and Rousseau's state of environment, the only affirmation they have is that men are born free and identical, with no higher administration with the exclusion of divine power. Locke adamantly accepted that in environment, anarchy and a powerful sense of insecurity amidst the persons was prevalent. (Cox, 1960)

The idea of the social contract when examined carefully is seen to have very few implications, and is used for all sorts of reasons, and generates quite contrary conclusions. Perhaps the most perplexing problem raised by the doctrine of the social contract that emerged and flourished in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is that it produced political prescriptions that were profoundly at variance with one another. Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the three classical expositors of the doctrine, developed concepts of the state that were scarcely compatible. The first endorsed the absolute state, the second the provisional state, and the third the moral state, or the state-as-church.

The kind that explains the state's justification by saying that people lend their power to political rulers on condition that it be used to satisfy certain of their most important needs, and the kind that explains the state's justification by saying that people alienate or give up their power to political rulers in the (mere) hope that doing so will satisfy certain of their most important needs. (Shapin, Shaffer, 1995) Advocates of the first kind of argument are drawn to an agent/principal understanding of the ruler/subject relationship; advocates of the second kind of argument are espousing a master/slave interpretation of the ruler/subject relationship that precludes legitimate rebellion'.

I personally believe Hobbes put forward the finest statement ever of the 'alienation' social contract theory, and as the excerpts above make plain, her book is primarily concerned to demonstrate the invalidity of his theory: it is not, in her view, an authentic social contract theory at all; it does not require any reference to a social contract; and it leads to a master/slave concept of political rule. Hampton does not stop there, however. I also rearrange and rework some of the elements in Hobbes's theory to show how it could, without too much difficulty, become an authentic or valid social contract theory in the sense that she has defined it. Hobbes is right, in her view, only to the extent that he can be 'salvaged' as Locke, or as a Nozickean variation of Locke.

The first and most obvious common element in the doctrine of the social contract is ...