Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau
Locke defends toleration as a political good, arguing for a widespread general acceptance of different religious beliefs. His view of toleration does have some limits, and he states that an individual is in the state of nature by comparing that individual's state of nature to the state of nature of other people. According to Locke, two people can be said to equal when they are not governed by nor have a higher power to report to. He states this in LETTER, and expands by saying that people are in the state of nature when they do not have a common superior on earth to settle their disputes. According to Locke, the judge is not to be one of the parties to the dispute, since he cannot be his own superior. On earth, God is everyone's superior, but he does not adjudicate and enforce his decisions in this life. Locke states that actions that one must do for God cannot be enforced by any type of human actions, and also cannot be placed in effect by God. Even though God cannot do anything about this, these actions still fall into the state of nature.
Locke states that toleration is a political good because it preserves peace in society. For example, he states that if each person enforces the law of nature on their own initiative, acting on their own interpretation of the law of nature and on theirs own assessment of the facts, the result most likely will be confusion and conflict. This type of angry mob would lead to people disagreeing with each other and would result in people fighting and additional violence. On the other hand, if there was no such thing as a higher power, then people would not have a reason to fight because there would not be any conflict-taking place between people. According to Locke, everyone should renounce the right of private judgment, even the right to judge in one's own case. He believed that individuals should assist to enforce the judgment of the commonwealth, and not to attempt to enforce the law of nature unless absolutely necessary. According to Locke any kind of power or force is unacceptable and unwarranted unless someone is using force in response to self-defense or as a method of justifiable self-preservation.
Locke further stated that the undertaking to accept and enforce the commonwealth's judgments, although within limits, meant that individuals sometimes must enforce judgments that they may not agree with. He states that one must enforce the magistrate's judgment, even if they believed that the magistrate's judgment was not an implication of natural law. Locke additionally stated that when the magistrate's judgment was against natural law, the individual disagreeing with the judgment may abstain from assisting in enforcing the judgment. However, he states that one cannot help enforce the judgment, but one must not oppose it with force. Locke felt that as long as people obeyed for the good of all of society, they placed society's best interest at heart.
According to Locke, everyone, even those in positions of power, should not have any kind of private judgment and also should not be responsible for individually enforcing natural law. In other words, anyone with power cannot use force on anyone else, and that person in power must be treated on the same level as everyone else. Locke states that "as the private judgment of any particular person, if erroneous, does not exempt him from the obligation of law, so the private judgment of the magistrate does not give him any new right of imposing law upon his subjects which [was not] in the constitution of the government granted him (LETTER)." Lock believed that magistrates in their official capacity at times had to make and enforce judgments in which they privately did not agree with and were subject to the same political obligation as everyone else. In this way Locke defended toleration as a political good.
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Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau describe different accounts of the state of nature, and as a result of their different described accounts, different political outcomes arise. In Leviathan, Hobbes discusses the elements of "liberty" and man's "natural state," defining liberty as the absence of opposition. Hobbes states that liberty is man's natural state in which man fully exercises his rights of nature. According to Hobbes, the manner in which politics are conducted on a daily basis goes in accordance with the manner in which human nature operates as well. According to Hobbes, this state of nature...
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Rousseau's work on The Social Contract begins with a legendary ringing indictment of society as it exists: "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains" (Rousseau 1993, p. 693). Before examining Rousseau's theory of government in greater detail, however, it is worth noting what assumptions are contained in this first sentence of The Social Contract, which is perhaps the most famous line that Rousseau ever wrote. It contains
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