Compare and Contrast Hobbes" and Locke's State's of Nature.
Thomas Hobbes lived in seventeenth century England. At this time, the issue of sovereignty was a huge part of politics and Hobbes was not a very popular man. He sought to achieve stability and peace through investigating the nature of social life. In the Leviathan, Hobbes attempts to explain the nature of power. He states it is in the nature of man to fight his neighbors, and unless there is a power over them prevent it, they will kill each other. "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe they are in a condition which is called war; and such a war as is, of every man, against every man." Only if all men put themselves under the absolute control of a central power can they avoid what Hobbes regards as their natural state.
According to Hobbes, any reasonable human being living in the state of nature will try to get out of it. The problem is that, according to Hobbes, to get out of the state of nature, each man must give up a part of his freedom to a central sovereign form of government. Only when men may enter into this kind of a social contract can they truly live in peace. .
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building, no instrument 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 the danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
