Thomas Hobbes
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his most famous work, Leviathan, in which he proposed a model of early human development to justify the creation of polities, i.e. governed bodies. Hobbes described an ideal state of nature wherein every person had equal right to every resource in nature and was free to use any means to acquire those resources. He claimed that such an arrangement created a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). The book has been interpreted by scholars as posing two "stark alternatives"; total obedience to an absolute ruler, or "a state of nature, which closely resembles civil war...where all have reason to fear a violent death".[16] Hobbes' view can therefore be interpreted as a defense of absolutism, arguing that human beings enter into a social contract for their protection and agree to obey the dictates of the sovereign; in Hobbes' worldview, "the sovereign is nothing more than the personal embodiment of orderly government."[17] Hobbes himself argued "The final cause, end, or design of men (who naturally love liberty, and dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in Commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby."[18]
[edit] John Locke
In the Two Treatise of Government, Locke refutes the theory of the Divine Right of Kings as put forward by Robert Filmer; he "minutely examines key Biblical passages"[19] and concludes that absolute monarchy is not supported by Christian theology. "Locke singles out Filmer's contention that men are not 'naturally free' as the key issue, for that is the 'ground'...on which Filmer erects his argument for the claim that all 'legitimate' government is 'absolute monarchy'."[19]
In the Second Treatise of Government, Locke examines the concept of the social contract put forward by other theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, but reaches a different conclusion. Although he agreed with Hobbes on the concept of a state of nature before existing forms of government arose, he challenged Hobbes' view that the state of nature was equivalent to a state of war, instead arguing that there were certain natural rights belonging to all human beings, which continued even after a political authority was established. "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone...being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, health or possessions".[20] According to one scholar, the basis of Locke's thought in the Second Treatise is that "contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits...behind [this] doctrine lies the idea of the independence of the individual person."[21] In other words, Locke's view was different from Hobbes' in that he interpreted the idea of the "state of nature" differently, and he argued that people's natural rights were not necessarily eliminated by their consent to be governed by a political authority.
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