Social contract: Summarize the views of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.    Â
Social contract is giving up rule over
oneself and granting it to a single ruler. The social contract theory concept
came to being as a result of oppression and hardships in the society. Man
entered into two agreements; Pactum Unionis and Pactum Subjection is to
overcome the problems. The first, Union is people sought protection of their
property and lives, and as a result, a society of respect for each other and
harmony was born. Subjection is, on the other hand, is where people united, and
together they pledged to obey the authority and surrender whole or part of
their rights and liberty to the authority. The authority in return would
guarantee the protection of lives property of everyone to a certain extent.
Therefore, people and the authority agreed to live together guided by common
laws and create an enforcement mechanism for the social contract and laws which
constitute it. The authority came to being due to the two agreements.
Thomas Hobbes 1588- 1679 lived at a
crucial time in England when there was a clash between the King and his
supporters, the monarchists and the Parliamentarians led by Oliver Cromwell who
demanded more power. Hobbes believed that in a society people living with no
authority, people only act on their self-interests. He gives a clear
illustration by giving a hypothetical situation of the way things were prior
the authority, in his words, life was solitary, nasty, poor, brutish and short.
He described the society without authority as the state of nature, and it was
“war of all against all.†Molarity was not in existence, and everyone lived in
fear, but the most plenteous was fear of death, made eminent by the violence
that surrounded the society. People, therefore, gave up on the sovereignty to
the “Leviathan†and embrace peace in the social contract. “Leviathan†who is a
ruler as defined by Hobbes is bestowed upon, the power to enforce renunciation
of violence by the subjects. The ruler may even use force against the people as
long as in the long run peace is obtained. He maintains that the purpose of the
authority is to impose and maintain law and order and prevent any form of
violence. He was therefore in support of the King but against the theory of
Divine rights of a king which states that authority is bestowed upon him
presumably by God.
John Locke, on the other hand, lived
between the years 1632 and 1704. His argument on the state of nature and social
contract are quite different from that of Hobbes. He argues that the social
contract and the right of people to revolt against the authority were a huge
influence to democratic revolution that followed the founders of the United
States, Thomas Jefferson being one of them. According to him, the state of
nature is pre-political but not pre-moral meaning that the state is not as
depicted by Hobbies as a state of war but that of liberty and one that everyone
is free to pursue their interests. He envisions a less frightening natural
state, where people live in freedom, but very chaotic. People, therefore,
decided to give up some of their liberty to limit chaos and regulate life. The
act, however, did not give the rulers the absolute right to control people only
to enforce the safety of their lives and property. The people have the right to
overthrow the government if it is no longer capable of fulfilling the
agreement.
In my view, John Locke’s model of the
social contract is in use in the United States. Reason being, people have the
right to freedom. The government acts as a source of security for everyone, be
it financial, security of people’s lives, property and much more. People have
the right to vote for the leaders they wish to rule them. The leaders do not
have an absolute say; they stand to be corrected by the citizens of the nation.
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