John Locke

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. While the British liberal tradition has emphasized expanding democracy, French liberalism has emphasized rejecting authoritarianism and is linked to nation-building.

The Essential John Locke is a new book and video series about the famous English philosopher commonly known as the “Father of Liberalism.” It spotlights his pioneering ideas about equality, individual rights and the role of the state, which helped lay the foundation for modern societies.

Locke views the state of nature more positively and presupposes it to be governed by natural law. Hobbes emphasises the free and equal condition of man in the state of nature, as he states that ‘nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of mind and body…the difference between man and man is not so considerable.

Hobbes believed that in man’s natural state, moral ideas do not exist. Thus, in speaking of human nature, he defines good simply as that which people desire and evil as that which they avoid, at least in the state of nature. Hobbes uses these definitions as bases for explaining a variety of emotions and behaviors.

Locke also disagreed with Hobbes about the social contract. For him, it was not just an agreement among the people, but between them and the sovereign (preferably a king). According to Locke, the natural rights of individuals limited the power of the king.

One of the similarities between the three philosophers was that they believed in freedom. Rousseau thought that humans had freedom existed when humans created a new society. Hobbes argued that freedom came about when humans were ruled by monarchy. When it comes to government, the philosophers also had different views.

Montesquieu

Social contract, in political philosophy, an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each. They then, by exercising natural reason, formed a society (and a government) by means of a contract among themselves.

Hobbes defines contract as “the mutual transferring of right.” In the state of nature, everyone has the right to everything – there are no limits to the right of natural liberty. The social contract is the agreement by which individuals mutually transfer their natural right.

Hobbes calls this figure the “Leviathan,” a word derived from the Hebrew for “sea monster” and the name of a monstrous sea creature appearing in the Bible; the image constitutes the definitive metaphor for Hobbes’s perfect government.

Old Testament references to a huge sea monster, Leviathan (in Hebrew, Liwyāthān), are thought to spring from an ancient myth in which the god Baal slays a multiheaded sea monster. Leviathan can also be immensely useful as a general term meaning “something monstrous or of enormous size.”

In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that the absolute power of the sovereign was ultimately justified by the consent of the governed, who agreed, in a hypothetical social contract, to obey the sovereign in all matters in exchange for a guarantee of peace and security.