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

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