Question

How did Thomas Hobbes’s interpretation of the social contract differ from John Locke’s?

Answer 1

Answer:

• Hobbes' interpretation of the social contract believed human beings were inherently at odds with each other and therefore needed an authoritarian government to rule over them.
• Lockes' interpretation of the social contract believed that human beings are morally neutral by nature, and can live side by side without a government -- but that creating a government makes society better.

Explanation:

Both English philosophers, Hobbes and Locke, believed there is a "social contract" -- that governments are formed by the will of the people.  But their theories on why people want to live under governments were very different.

Thomas Hobbes published his political theory in Leviathan in 1651, following the chaos and destruction of the English Civil War.  He saw human beings as naturally suspicious of one another, in competition with each other, and harmful toward one another as a result.  Forming a government meant giving up personal liberty, but gaining security against what would otherwise be a situation of every person at war with every other person.

John Locke published his Two Treatises on Civil Government in 1690, following the mostly peaceful transition of government power that was the Glorious Revolution in England.  Locke believed people are born as blank slates--with no preexisting knowledge or moral leanings.  Experience then guides them to the knowledge and the best form of life, and they choose to form governments to make life and society better.

In teaching about Hobbes and Locke, I've often described the difference between them in this way.  If society were playground basketball, Hobbes believed you must have a referee who sets and enforces rules, or else the players will eventually get into heated arguments and bloody fights with one another, because people get nasty in competition that way.   Locke believed you could have an enjoyable game of playground basketball without a referee, but a referee makes the game better because then any disputes that come up between players have a fair way of being resolved.    Of course, Hobbes and Locke never actually wrote about basketball -- a game not invented until 1891 in America by James Naismith.  But it's just an illustration I've used to try to show the difference of ideas between Hobbes and Locke.   :-)