The State-of-Nature Teachings of Hobbes and Locke
Jeffrey Pratt
Introduction
In the Winter 2002 semester at Brigham Young
University, I took Political Science 150, the intro-
ductory course on comparative government. The
text that we used was Countries and Concepts, by
Michael Roskin. This text covered the domestic
politics of several key nation-states, such as Great
Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, South
Africa, Iran, and others, and it contained little
sidebars or feature boxes on the history, geogra-
phy, political culture, and political philosophies
associated with each state.
During a particular class period, our professor
gave us an in-class activity in which we were to
select two of these feature boxes from the text
and comment on them in a quick, one-page essay.
I chose one on the political philosophy of Thomas
Hobbes and another on that of John Locke. In
the box on Locke, as I recall, great care was
taken to differentiate the Lockean state of nature
from the Hobbesian. But when I read the two
accounts of these philosophers’ state of nature
teachings, I saw little difference between them. I
decided, then, to write that. When we received
our papers a week later or so, mine had a com-
ment from the professor which said, in substance,
“Interesting hypothesis, but Hobbes’ and Locke’s
state-of-nature teachings are generally thought
to be different because of Hobbes’ account of it
as being nasty and short, and Locke’s account of
it as generally nice, except for the protection of
property.”
I must say that, now having read some of
Hobbes’ and Locke’s writings, I feel a bit vin-
dicated in the assertion that I made that day.
For when we look closely at the state-of-nature
teachings of Hobbes and Locke, we will find that,
while they appear to be considerably different on
1
the surface, they are, in fact, not so different in
their implications.
“Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish,
and Short”
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was a monarchist;
he had no qualms with strong sovereigns as such.
He was undoubtedly influenced by the contem-
porary English Civil War—a bloody, anarchic
time in England—when he developed his theory
of human nature. In the beginning of Leviathan,
he lays out his observations of man:
For seeing life is but a motion of limbs,
the beginning whereof is in some prin-
cipal part within; why may we not say,
that all automata (engines that move
themselves by springs and wheels as
doth a watch) have an artificial life?
For what is the heart, but a spring;
and the nerves, but so many strings;
and the joints, but so many wheels,
giving motion to the whole body, such
as was intended by the artificer? (p.
124)
Human beings, then, are mere artifice; they
are machines. Life is no more than the move-
ment of these machines. Further, our senses are
caused by “the external body, or object, which
presseth the organ proper to each sense, either im-
mediately, . . . or mediately,” and these pressures
induce reactions in the inner organs, such as the
brain or heart, which constitute the senses (p.
125).
And as pressing, rubbing, or striking
the eye, makes us fancy a light; and
pressing the ear, produceth a din; so
 do the bodies also we see, or hear, pro-
duce the same by their strong, though
unobserved action.
Imaginations, then, or dreams, and even mem-
ories, are echoes of these senses, decaying with
time (p. 126).
We see from this that Hobbes takes a very
materialistic view of man and of nature. It is
true that he claims that
there is no doubt, but God can make
unnatural apparitions: But that he
does it so often, as men need to fear
such things, more than they fear the
stay, or change, of the course of na-
ture, which he also can stay, and
change; is no point of Christian faith.
(pp. 128–9)
Nominally, then, he might believe in God, but
Hobbes unmistakably claims a very limited, rare,
extraordinary God—a God who largely (or even
entirely) stays out of nature.
Hobbes, then, sees that men are calculating
(Ch. 5; pp. 136–140), sensuous automatons, in-
terested only in their own good. He also finds:
[n]ature hath made men so equal,
in the faculties of body, and mind;
as that though there be found one
man sometimes manifestly stronger
in body, or of quicker mind than an-
other; yet when all is reckoned to-
gether, the difference between man,
and man, is not so considerable, as
that one man can thereupon claim to
himself any benefit, to which another
may not pretend, as well as he. (p.
169)
And seeing that the there are, in human
nature, “three principal causes of quarrel,” viz.
“first, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly,
glory[-seeking]”, Hobbes deduces that, in the
state of nature, i.e., the state that men would
exist in without government, “[w]hatsoever. . . is
1
We have already seen some of the somewhat ambivalent statements made by Hobbes with regard to God and
religion. Judgment of his religious views shall be left to the reader.
2
consequent to a state of war” would also be conse-
quent to the state of nature. The state of nature
would be a state of war between men:
In such condition, there is no place
for industry; because the fruit thereof
is uncertain: and consequently no
culture of the earth; no navigation,
nor use of the commodities that may
be imported by sea; no commodious
building; no instruments of moving,
and removing such things as require
much force; no knowledge of the face
of the earth; no account of time; no
arts; no letters; no society; and which
is worst of all, continual fear, and
danger of violent death; and the life
of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short. (p. 171)
Hobbes finds this state to be so abominable
as to justify nearly anything to prevent it. Thus,
his Leviathan is born out of a theoretical “so-
cial contract” entered into by the natural man
with other natural men; it is a contract founded
in reason and self-interest, formed to escape the
uncertain, terrible state of nature. Leviathan is,
and must be, the absolute authority on Earth,
from which there can be absolutely no appeal to
any other authority. The subjects of Leviathan
must obey the will of the sovereign. Only in de-
fense of the natural right to self-preservation does
Hobbes justify disobedience to Leviathan. But
in all other aspects, Leviathan is ultimate and
absolute, and must be, because living in the state
of nature would be much worse.
The Lockean Social Contract
The immediate fate of Hobbes’ work was rele-
gation to the bonfires of academic disapproval;
and personally, Hobbes found himself branded
an atheist.1 But John Locke was, in some re-
spects, even more radical than Hobbes. For while
Hobbes’ theory of the social contract supports
the idea of absolute monarchy (without using the
theory of divine right), Locke categorically rejects
all monarchy.
Locke’s natural man is not—at least, not
apparently—the wildly competitive, diffident,
glory-seeking automaton that Hobbesian man
is, which, when brought into being among other
Hobbesian men, produce the nasty state of war
that only the collective formation of a sovereign
can avert. The state of nature, for Locke, is “a
state of perfect freedom” for men
to order their actions, and dispose of
their possessions and persons, as they
think fit, within the bounds of the
law of nature; without asking leave,
or depending on the will of any other
man.
It is also, somewhat like Hobbes’ state of nature,
“[a] state. . . of equality, wherein all the power and
jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more
than another.” (p. 312)
But though this state is one of liberty, is not
unboundedly free:
[Man] has not liberty to destroy him-
self, or so much as any creature in
his possession, but where some nobler
use that its bare preservation calls for
it. The state of nature has a law of
nature to govern it, which obliges ev-
ery one: And reason, which is that
law, teaches all mankind, who will
but consult it, that being equal and
independent, no one ought to harm
one another in his life, health, lib-
erty, or possessions. For men being
all the workmanship of one omnipo-
tent and infinitely wise Maker; all the
servants of one sovereign master, sent
into the world by his order, and about
his business; they are his property,
whose workmanship they are, made
2
The Lockean account of private property is essentially a labor theory of value: nature provides raw materials, nearly
useless in themselves, which, when imputed with the labor of the individual, become the property of that individual
and hence have value. This labor theory would be supported later by Adam Smith and, still later, it would be used to
attack capitalism by Karl Marx. There are, however, other theories of value, such as the marginal utility theory of
value, articulated by the Austrian economist Carl Menger (1840–1921) in his Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre in
1871.
3
to last during his, not another’s plea-
sure. And being furnished with like
faculties, sharing all in one commu-
nity of nature, there cannot be sup-
posed any such subordination among
us, that may authorize us to destroy
another, as if we were made for one
another’s uses, as the inferior ranks
of creatures are for ours. (p. 313)
There is, then, a law of nature, which is rea-
son, which, when considering the divine origins
of man, teaches the mind that all human beings
are equal and, therefore, have no right to abuse
any other human being. Locke continues the ar-
gument by saying that while man is “bound to
preserve himself,” he ought “to preserve the rest
of mankind,” as long as “his own preservation
comes not into competition,” and that this, too,
is evident in reason (p. 313).
And since man has, inherent in himself, the
right to preserve himself (and his property, which
Locke views in some ways as an extension of the
individual self2 ), he has, also within himself, the
original powers of government. That is, in the
state of nature, prior to any government, the ra-
tional law of nature evinces that the executive
and legislative powers rest with the individual
himself, founded on his right to preserve his life
and property, and based on the notion that no
man is to live at the pleasure of another. Thus,
in the state of nature, whenever anyone declares
himself “to quit the principles of nature” (p. 313)
by intruding upon another’s life, liberty, or prop-
erty, putting himself above another, such a person
becomes no longer subject to such principles and
loses their protection. The offended party then,
by reason of the law of nature, possesses the right
to execute justice against the offender. This is
not justice in any institutional sense; it is justice
in the sense of self-defense or self-preservation.
Now, such an offense Locke calls the state of
war. It is, to him, an unnatural state, i.e., it is
separate and distinct from the state of nature.
Whenever the state of war exists, then, the ratio-
nal law of nature is violated, the offender stands
outside of the protection of that law, and the
offended party has the just right to exact retri-
bution or take preventative measures. Once that
matter is resolved, the state of war ceases, and
the state of nature resumes.
But in this state of nature, the protection of
property and life is handled by every individual,
and it may become too difficult to continually
execute that protection. Therefore, Locke argues,
men enter into a social contract, delegating that
responsibility to a government from among them-
selves, while they retain every other right. This,
to Locke, is the origin of legitimate government.3
It is principally because of this that Locke cat-
egorically opposed monarchy, since the monarch
is someone against whom there is no secular power
to appeal to. The monarch places himself outside
of the rule of reason and nature by virtue of his
very position. Contemporary monarchies, then,
to Locke, were not civil societies at all, but vari-
ous manifestations of the state of war. The law
of reason, then, demanded that the state of war
be rectified by resistance, separation or rebellion.
Nature and War
Though Hobbes and Locke begin with different
premises about human nature, they do come to
rather similar conclusions, though it may not be
readily apparent. Hobbes saw that pre-social or
pre-governmental human beings would invariably
lead to an anarchic state of war, with one against
all, and that life would be fearful and short, and
civilization would be nearly impossible. Locke,
however, sees a law of reason and nature that
pervades human existence, and sees human be-
ings as aware, albeit perhaps dimly, of that law.
Thus Locke’s state of nature is not anarchic. But
it can, sometimes, yield the state of war, wherein
the rights of one human being are endangered or
actively violated by another.
With Lockean man constantly securing his
property and liberty against his neighbors,
against the possibility of attack, one cannot help
but wonder whether this would lead to an exis-
tence that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short,” in which, with time, man becomes unable
to trust his neighbors and comes to see them all
as competitors and enemies. Perhaps, then, a
Lockean state of nature will, with time, tend to
degenerate into the Hobbesian state of war of
each against all, unless that state of war is pre-
vented by the institution of the social contract.4
In this respect, then, the state of nature teach-
ings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke possess
a consonance, which I attempted to explain in
Political Science 150.

3
While David Hume could find no such example of this in history, or, at least, no significant example of it, and
therefore claimed that the social contract theories of his predecessors were untenable, the creation of the United
States is, in some ways, a modern example. Hume died in 1776; the Articles of Confederation were agreed to by the
Continental Congress in 1777, and they were ratified in 1781. The Constitution of the United States was ratified
in 1787. Of course, since the founding of the United States was influenced heavily by John Locke, and therefore
succeeded him in time, Hume might have argued that that event would not be a very good example of a natural,
pre-Lockean social contract.
4
The difficulties between social contract theory and rational choice theory, with the contract seen as a public good,
I have not undertaken to analyze here. For a treatment of these aspects of social contract theory, see Patrick Neal,
“Hobbes and Rational Choice Theory,” The Western Political Quarterly, Volume 41, Issue 4 (December 1988), pp.
635–632.