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Similarities Between John Locke And Thomas Hobbes

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Throughout history there have been numerous political philosophers, and many would agree that John Locke and Thomas Hobbes were the most important of them all. Both of these philosophers had various different theories on what things like a perfect government and a time before government would have been like. Thomas Hobbes tended to lean on the more extreme side of defining humanity, while John Locke had a more peaceful and “humane” idea of the definition of humanity. This essay will be comparing both philosopher’s major theories of the social contract, “The State of Nature,” and the definition of what humans really are.
A social contract is a set of rules and an agreement between a countries government and its people. The US Constitution is an example of this. Both Hobbes and Locke agreed that a perfect government should have a social contract. Hobbes thought people were naturally dangerous to themselves and each other, so he believed a social contract should take away all of peoples rights in exchange for their protection. He also believed that because people do not naturally know right from wrong, the government would always right. Unlike Hobbes, Locke thought people were mostly …show more content…

John Locke had a more mellow philosophical theory of what “The State of Nature” would have been like. He believed that humans would have been naturally peaceful and would have gotten along just fine most of the time. Thomas Hobbes theory of the topic is pretty much the converse of Locke’s Theory. He believed that without government the strong would dominate the week, there would be a lot of chaos and violence, and peoples lives would have been “Nasty, brutish, and short”. The only similarity between Locke and Hobbes on this subject is the fact that they both agreed all people were born with absolute

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