Thomas Hobbes And John Locke example essay topic

English Civil War and Glorious Revolution followed the Dutch revolt against Spain as the second of the Western Revolutions that ended absolute monarchy and finally led to democratic representative government. As tradition had it that the English leaders in 1641-49 and 1688-89 that their acts were revolutionary. Parliament chopped of the head of one king and replaced him by another because of the traditional liberties of England. Statesmen and pamphleteers arguing for royalist, parliamentary, or radical principals made this a impressionable period of modern political thought. The Three main theorists of the time Bishop Bossuet, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke had similarities and differences between their beliefs. Bishop Bossuet was a tutor to Louis XIV's son in the 1670's, and the most religious and the main theorist of the king's absolutism.

He believed that the royal power is absolute. That the king does not even need to give an account of his day to anyone, and so it is not possible for writers to try to write about the confusing subjects of absolute government and arbitrary government. In addition, he believed that if the king does not have absolute power he is not able to conduct a advantageous act for the state or put down evil and rebellions. The king he believed is not a private person, but a public one, which has the state and will of people with him. As all perfection and all strength is united in God, so all the power of individuals is united in the person of the prince.

He found it magnifying that one man could manifest so much control and power. Thomas Hobbes was an English philosopher and political theorist and one of the first modern Western thinkers to provide a non-religious justification for the political state. Hobbes wrote the Leviathan which distilled the political insights of the civil war. Hobbes saw in humanity a perpetual and restless desire of power after power.

He believed that without authority to impose law by force that society would fall apart into a war of every man against every man. In addition he believed that life without government was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Hobbes from this contract theory drew government conclusion opposite to those of the Huegnots and Cromwell and his army, who had said that king is king by contract and had cut off Charles head for going against the contract. Hobbes believed that the society should obey the sovereign because the sovereign could maintain order. To ensure the keeping of order he believed that the Sovereign's power had to be absolute and unquestioned. Thus, Hobbes took contract theory and transformed it into justification of free and elective power.

John Locke, was a friend of the Earl of Shaftesbury who had founded the Whig Party, provided a theoretical foundation for what Parliament had done and for the succeeding development of representative government. He probably wrote most of his Civil Government: Two Treaties when he was in political exile in Holland. In it he answered Thomas Hobbs justification of absolute sovereignty with a convincing theory of limited government. Locke's first principle was that all individuals have a natural right to life, liberty, and property. Locke got the rest of his theories from this premise of natural rights, and from a more hopeful human nature. Locke also introduced a new way of government organization.

He imposed a separation of power that would let the elected representatives of the people to check a tyrannical executive. He marked property as the basis of all freedom and the purpose of government itself. Bossuet, Hobbes, and Locke all argued that government was a contract in which humanity exchanged the anarchy of the state of nature for the security that government provided. Bossuet, believed in the absolute power of the king and that all the king should be a public person having all the power and strength of the people. Hobbes believed that the sovereign should have absolute power, because he believed that society should agree to obey the sovereign in order to maintain peace. Thus, they both believed that their should be a figure that has power over the people.

On the other hand, Locke was more pessimistic than Hobbes, deriving his system from more pessimistic views of human nature than Hobbes. Locke believed in natural rights allowing to limit the power of the government, emphasized that property is the basis of all freedom, and that a government that acted without consent, went against the contract and gave the right to the subjects to revolution. Above all, he believed that the citizens followed the rights of a region and in return the government was a contract that provided them with security. 343.