2.8 John Locke:
What Rights Should Government Protect?
If Machiavelli focused on what rulers must do to survive, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) asked a different question: what would human life look like without government at all?
His answer was bleak. Hobbes believed that without a strong authority to keep order, human beings would live in fear, conflict, and insecurity.
Hobbes wrote during a period of major political turmoil in England, including the English Civil War.
Seeing violence, instability, and struggles for power helped shape his view of human nature and political life. He was deeply concerned with disorder and believed that peace could not be taken for granted.
Hobbes is best known for his book Leviathan, published in 1651. In it, he describes what he called the state of nature, a condition in which there is no government, no common authority, and no law strong enough to restrain people. In that condition, Hobbes argued, individuals would be roughly equal in their ability to harm one another, and they would compete for survival, resources, and security. By this he meant that even the weakest person is strong enough to kill the strongest (through sleep, conspiracy, etc) and thus everyone must live in fear.
Hobbes specifically argued that the state of nature is a condition of war of every man against every man, or at least a condition where the known disposition to conflict is always present. Crucially, he clarified that war isn’t just physical fighting, but the known disposition to fight.
Because people desire safety and fear death, Hobbes believed they would naturally distrust one another. Even if no one wants constant conflict, the absence of authority creates uncertainty. People cannot be sure what others will do, so fear pushes them toward aggression, self-protection, and preemptive violence.
For Hobbes, this is why life in the state of nature becomes what he famously described as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Hobbes did not think people were evil in a simplistic sense. Rather, he believed human beings are driven by self-interest, fear, and the desire for self-preservation. In a world without a strong political authority, those traits make peace unstable and conflict likely. This is why Hobbes thought security had to come before almost everything else.
His solution was called the Social Contract.
Hobbes argued that people, acting rationally, would agree to give up some of their freedom and submit to a powerful sovereign in exchange for protection and order. This sovereign could be a king or another governing authority, but it had to be strong enough to enforce peace and prevent society from collapsing into violence.
This made Hobbes one of the most important early theorists of absolute sovereignty.
In his view, divided authority is dangerous because it invites conflict. A weak government cannot protect people, and without protection, law and justice mean very little.
For Hobbes, the primary purpose of government is not to make people virtuous. It is to keep them alive and maintain order.
Thus, he used logic and self-interest, rather than divine right or traditional religious arguments, to defend strong sovereign authority. This was scandalous at the time, but also a major reason why he is considered one of the fathers of modern political science.
Hobbes also argued that the sovereign’s power cannot be resisted or divided, should have no checks and balances, and that the people have no right to revolt (unless the sovereign is literally failing to protect their lives). This is a key distinction between him and Locke.
Hobbes had a lasting impact on political thought because he placed fear, security, and authority at the center of politics. He forced later thinkers to confront a hard question: is freedom possible without order, and can justice exist without security?
At the same time, Hobbes’s theory raises serious concerns. If government must be extremely strong to keep peace, what protects people from tyranny? If citizens surrender too much power, the sovereign may become oppressive. Hobbes was willing to accept that risk more than many later political thinkers would be.
Even so, Hobbes remains one of the most influential thinkers in political science because he explained government not as a divine gift or a path to virtue, but as a human response to fear, insecurity, and the threat of violence.
In section 2.8, we will look at John Locke, who also wrote about government as a kind of contract, but with a much more hopeful view of human nature, rights, and liberty.