Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau

ECON 205W
Summer 2006
Prof. Cunningham

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 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
• Personal Background
• Most Important Writings:
– The Elements of Law (1640)
– De Cive (The Citizen, 1642)
– Leviathan (1651)
• Overall Objectives:
– To put moral and political philosophy on a scientific basis
– Contribute to the stability, peace, and welfare of mankind

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 Approach
• Felt that earlier thinkers (excluding Machiavelli and certain
others) had failed because they attempted to base their
theories of society on mankind’s highest aspirations.
• Created a code of natural law as morally binding and
determining the purpose of society.
• Separated his notion of natural law from human perfection.
• Develops a psychology of human passions or interests.

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 Approach (2)
• Believed he had uncovered the basis of
human behavior and human nature. Used
these as assumptions to build his theory.
• Believes people have competing interests, and
this has implications.
• The “State of Nature.”

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 Implications
• To prevent chaos, society, though political and
economic organization use the force and coercion to
hold society together.
• People ought to be willing to give up the same rights
as they expect others to give up, and out to be
satisfied with just as much liberty with respect to
others as others have with respect to them.
• Agreement to this by the members of society forms
the social contract.

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 Social Contract
• The social contract is not between the citizens and
the ruling power.
• It is a contract citizens make with each other to
accept the rule of central authority.
• The minority accepts the majority decision.
• A society so united forms a single body, a
commonwealth, a leviathan.

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 Social Contract (2)
• The ruler is the absolute authority.
• Parts of the social contract process.
• Validity of the contact.
• The contract is binding only if its purpose is
fulfilled—i.e., that the citizens are secure.

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 The Sovereign and Citizens
• Rights of the sovereign:
– Enforcement of Law
– Legislative power
– Judicial power
• Sovereign is not subject to the laws.
• Citizens retain certain “inalienable rights” or
“retained rights”

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 Entitlement Theory
• Distributive justice.
• The guarantee of performance on contracts is the
basis of all justice.
• Without respect for (private) property rights,
everyone has a claim on everything, and chaos
reigns.
• Justice is not equal outcomes, but rather equality
of process and equality of opportunity.

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 Distributive Justice
• In the state of nature, people share a kind of
equality. Inequality is a product of civil law.
• Regardless, people perceive themselves as
equal, and will enter into contracts willingly
only under equal terms.
• Doctrines of inequality don’t work.

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 Hobbes’ Economic Contributions
• Focus on people as they are.
• Predecessor to Theory of Moral Sentiments
(Smith)
• Entitlement theory of justice
• Basic of all justice is enforcement of
property rights
• Social contract with retained rights
• Equality opportunity
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 John Locke (1632-1704)
• Background
• Basic ideas:
– Rational agent model
– Coincidence of self-interest and general interest
• Reacts more to Sir Robert Filmer than to Hobbes.
• Locke’s message:
– All government is limited in its powers and exists only by
the consent of the governed.
– All people are born free.

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 Great Works
• Two Treatises on Government (1690)
• A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689)
• Some Considerations of the Consequences of
the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value
of Money (1691)

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 Two Treatises on Gov’t
• Begins with the questions:
– “What is political power?
– What is the appropriate end and objective of civil
government?
• Answers:
– Political power is the right to make laws, enforcing them at
penalty of death.
– Establishment of penalties related to regulating and
preserving property and defending the commonwealth
from foreign attack, all for the public good.

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 The State of Nature
• Contrast with Hobbes’ view.
• The state of nature is a state of perfect freedom and
equality.
• The world was never without political or social
structure. Political and social structure arise naturally
with humankind.
• People “… living together according to reason,
without a common superior on earth with authority
to judge between them, is properly the state of
nature.”

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 The State of War
• It is the use of force without right.
• In peace, there is no use of force without right.
• Allows that there are “inconveniences” in the state
of nature in which people may need to be judges in
their own case. It such situations, the state of nature
may be indistinguishable from the state of war.

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 Self-Preservation
• Everyone should pursue their own preservation,
but is also obligated to pursue the preservation of
the rest of humankind.
• What if these duties conflict?
• Aggression against others if a violation of the law
of nature.
• A course of conduct that tends toward self-
preservation is in accord with nature, which is the
law of nature.

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 Locke on Property
• Natural distribution
• Theory of private property rights
• Begins with the assertion that every person owns themselves
and their labor. This is the foundation of all other property.
• Property acquired through just acquisition, earned through
use of self and labor.
• Means of limiting accumulation is only required if there is less
than a superabundance.
• Only labor can create property. Transfer does not create
property.

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 Locke on Money
• Money arises by mutual consent.
• It is a social institution that arises our of mutual
trust.
• Money arose and hastened the end of the common.
• Money encourages people to produce a surplus.
• Money is an ability to accumulate, leading to an
inequality of wealth. People accept this because it is
in the common interest.

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 The Economic Problem
• Nature is powerless to provide for its own main
intention—the increase of mankind.
• Nature cannot extend its own limits. (Problem of
scarcity?)
• People can make increase possible, solving the
economic problem.
• The continuation of the natural state is impossible.
Growth is necessary.

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 Political Power
• Must be limited.
• Majority rule.
• Separation of Powers.
• There is no freedom where there is no law.

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 Key Contributions to Economics
• Rational agent.
• In the long run, self-interest and general interest coincide.
People are basically good, but self-interested.
• Ideal structure for society is to preserve property rights and
let self-interest reign.
• Entitlement theory of distributive justice. Equal treatment
and process.
• Focus on growth.
• Political power should be limited, but freedom and economic
progress require law.

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 Jean Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778)

• Concerned with the relationship of the state and

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 Life and Work
• Rousseau’s life.
• Confessions (1784)
• Emile (1762)
• The Social Contract (1762)

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 Rousseau’s View of Human Nature
• Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of
Mankind
• Civilization brought inequality and other evils.
• People have a sense of freedom, a faculty for self-
improvement, a natural feeling of compassion and self-love.
• The key social bond has been the development of private
property.
– “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground bethought
himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to
believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”

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 Human Nature (2)
• Private property is the source of all evil.
• Establishment of the institution of private
property lead to the establishment of society,
government, and law.
• The only solution is to abandon private
property.

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 Rousseau’s “State of Nature”
• Before people lived in societies, their activities were largely
dominated by unreflective pursuits of their own individual
welfare.
• The principle concern of people was self-preservation.
• There were no rights or moral relations to be respected.
• Cooperation was impossible.
• In this environment, it is impossible for human character to
develop, and people to rise above their base instincts.

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 Rousseau’s Social Contract
• “Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains.”
• The contract liberates people from the rude state of nature.
• Socialistic view of the relationship between the individual and society.
• The contract does not change people or their rights, but rather it offers
guarantees.
• It guarantees “individualism” by prohibiting excessive individualism or
self-interest.
• To Hobbes and Locke, political institutions are a necessary evil; to
Rousseau they are a blessing.

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 Social Contract (2)
• People empower the state by their contract with the ruler.
• The citizens give the state (and society) complete control
over themselves and their (individual) possessions.
• People give up independent interest by giving up authority
to the state to enforce the collective interest of society.
• If the ruler or laws act other than in the interests of the
whole of society, then the contract becomes void.

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 Social Contract (3)
• Society, through the social contract,
reshapes (changes) the individual.
• It is not necessary that choices be made by
a vote. Majority rule is not necessary.
Leaders can act in the general interest
without consulting the citizenry.

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