Handout A

Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government

Starting in the 1600s, European philosophers began debating the question of who should
govern a nation. As the absolute rule of kings
weakened, Enlightenment philosophers argued for
different forms of democracy.
In 1649, a civil war broke out over who would rule
England: Parliament or King Charles I. The war ended
with the beheading of the king. Shortly after Charles
was executed, an English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes
(1588–1679), wrote The Leviathan, a defense of the absolute
power of kings. The title of the book referred to a leviathan,
a mythological, whale-like sea monster that devoured whole
ships. Hobbes likened the leviathan to government, a
powerful state created to impose order.
Hobbes began The Leviathan by describing the state of Thomas Hobbes
nature where all individuals were naturally equal. Every
person was free to do what he or she needed to do to survive. As a result, everyone suffered
from continued fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man [was] solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.
In the state of nature, there were no laws or anyone to enforce them. The only way out of this situation,
Hobbes said, was for individuals to create some supreme power to impose peace on everyone.
Hobbes borrowed a concept from English contract law: an implied agreement. Hobbes asserted
that the people agreed among themselves to “lay down” their natural rights of equality and
freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a
person or a group. The sovereign would make and enforce the laws to secure a peaceful society,
making life, liberty, and property possible. Hobbes called this agreement the social contract.
Hobbes believed that a government headed by a king was the best form that the sovereign
could take. Placing all power in the hands of a king would mean more resolute and consistent
exercise of political authority, Hobbes argued. Hobbes also maintained that the social contract
was an agreement only among the people and not between them and their king. Once the
people had given absolute power to the king, they had no right to revolt against him.
Hobbes warned against the church meddling with the king’s government. He feared religion
could become a source of civil war. Thus, he advised that the church become a department of
the king’s government, which would closely control all religious affairs. In any conflict between
divine and royal law, Hobbes wrote, the individual should obey the king or choose death.
A new age with fresh ideas was emerging: the European Enlightenment. Thinkers of this time,
including Hobbes, wanted to improve human conditions on earth rather than concern
themselves with religion and the afterlife. These thinkers valued reason, science, religious
tolerance, and what they called “natural rights”: life, liberty, and property.
Enlightenment philosophers John Locke, Charles Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all
developed theories of government in which some or even all the people would govern. These
thinkers had a profound effect on the American and French revolutions and the democratic
governments that they produced.

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Locke: The Reluctant Democrat
John Locke (1632–1704) was born shortly before the
English Civil War. Locke studied science and medicine at
Oxford University and became a professor there. He
sided with the Protestant Parliament against the Roman
Catholic King James II in the Glorious Revolution of
1685. This event reduced the power of the king and
made Parliament the major authority in English
government.
In 1690, Locke published his Two Treatises of
Government. He generally agreed with Hobbes about the
brutality of the state of nature, which required a social
contract to assure peace. But he disagreed with Hobbes
on two major points.
First, Locke argued that natural rights such as life,
liberty, and property existed in the state of nature and
could never be taken away or even voluntarily given up
by individuals. These rights were “inalienable”
(impossible to surrender). Locke also disagreed with John Locke
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. The king
did not hold absolute power, as Hobbes had said, but acted only to enforce and protect the
natural rights of the people. If a sovereign violated these rights, the social contract was
broken, and the people had the right to revolt and establish a new government. Less than 100
years after Locke wrote his Two Treatises of Government, Thomas Jefferson used his theory in
writing the Declaration of Independence.
Although Locke spoke out for freedom of thought, speech, and religion, he believed property
to be the most important natural right. He declared that owners may do whatever they want
with their property as long as they do not invade the rights of others. Government, he said,
was mainly necessary to promote the “public good,” that is to protect property and encourage
commerce and little else. “Govern lightly,” Locke said.
Locke favored a representative government such as the English Parliament, which had a
hereditary House of Lords and an elected House of Commons. But he wanted representatives
to be only men of property and business. Consequently, only adult male property owners
should have the right to vote. Locke was reluctant to allow the propertyless masses of people
to participate in government because he believed that they were unfit.
The supreme authority of government, Locke said, should reside in the law-making
legislature, like England’s Parliament. The executive (prime minister) and courts would be
creations of the legislature and under its authority.

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 Montesquieu: The Balanced Democrat
When Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755) was
born, France was ruled by an absolute king, Louis
XIV. Montesquieu was born into a noble family
and educated in the law. He traveled extensively
throughout Europe, including England, where he
studied the Parliament. In 1722, he wrote a book,
ridiculing the reign of Louis XIV and the doctrines
of the Roman Catholic Church.
Montesquieu published his greatest work, The
Spirit of the Laws, in 1748. Unlike Hobbes and
Locke, Montesquieu believed that in the state of
nature individuals were so fearful that they
avoided violence and war. The need for food,
Montesquieu said, caused the timid humans to
associate with others and seek to live in a society.
“As soon as man enters into a state of society,”
Montesquieu wrote, “he loses the sense of his
weakness, equality ceases, and then commences
the state of war.”
Charles Montesquieu
Montesquieu did not describe a social contract as
such. But he said that the state of war among individuals and nations led to human laws and
government.
Montesquieu wrote that the main purpose of government is to maintain law and order,
political liberty, and the property of the individual. Montesquieu opposed the absolute
monarchy of his home country and favored the English system as the best model of
government.
Montesquieu somewhat misinterpreted how political power was actually exercised in
England. When he wrote The Spirit of the Laws, power was concentrated pretty much in
Parliament, the national legislature. Basing his ideas on separation of powers in the ancient
Roman Republic, Montesquieu thought he saw a separation and balancing of the powers of
government in England as well.
Montesquieu viewed the English king as exercising executive power balanced by the
law-making Parliament, which was itself divided into the House of Lords and the House of
Commons, each checking the other. Then, the executive and legislative branches were still
further balanced by an independent court system.
Montesquieu concluded that the best form of government was one in which the legislative,
executive, and judicial powers were separate and kept each other in check to prevent any
branch from becoming too powerful. He believed that uniting these powers, as in the
monarchy of Louis XIV, would lead to despotism. While Montesquieu’s separation of powers
theory did not accurately describe the government of England, Americans later adopted it as
the foundation of the U.S. Constitution.

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Rousseau: The Extreme Democrat
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was born in
Geneva, Switzerland, where all adult male citizens
could vote for a representative government. Rousseau
traveled in France and Italy, educating himself.
In 1751, he won an essay contest. His fresh view that
man was naturally good and was corrupted by society
made him a celebrity in the French salons where
artists, scientists, and writers gathered to discuss the
latest ideas.
A few years later he published another essay in which
he described savages in a state of nature as free, equal,
peaceful, and happy. When people began to claim
ownership of property, Rousseau argued, inequality,
murder, and war resulted.
According to Rousseau, the powerful rich stole the
land belonging to everyone and fooled the common
people into accepting them as rulers. Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau
concluded that the social contract was not a willing
agreement, as Hobbes, Locke, and Montesquieu had believed, but a fraud against the people
committed by the rich.
In 1762, Rousseau published his most important work on political theory, The Social Contract.
His opening line is still striking today: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Rousseau agreed with Locke that the individual should never be forced to give up his or her
natural rights to a king.
The problem in the state of nature, Rousseau said, was to find a way to protect everyone’s
life, liberty, and property while each person remained free. Rousseau’s solution was for
people to enter into a social contract. They would give up all their rights, not to a king, but to
“the whole community,” all the people. He called all the people the “sovereign,” a term used
by Hobbes to mainly refer to a king. The people then exercised their “general will” to make
laws for the “public good.”
Rousseau argued that the general will of the people could not be decided by elected
representatives. He believed in a direct democracy in which everyone voted to express the
general will and to make the laws of the land. Rousseau had in mind a democracy on a small
scale, a city-state like his native Geneva.
In Rousseau’s democracy, anyone who disobeyed the general will of the people “will be
forced to be free.” He believed that citizens must obey the laws or be forced to do so as long
as they remained a resident of the state. This is a “civil state,” Rousseau says, where security,
justice, liberty, and property are protected and enjoyed by all.
All political power, according to Rousseau, must reside with the people, exercising their
general will. There can be no separation of powers, as Montesquieu proposed. The people,
meeting together, will deliberate individually on laws and then by majority vote find the
general will. Rousseau’s general will was later embodied in the words “We the people . . .” at
the beginning of the U.S. Constitution.

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Rousseau was rather vague on the mechanics of how his democracy would work. There
would be a government of sorts, entrusted with administering the general will. But it would
be composed of “mere officials” who got their orders from the people.
Rousseau believed that religion divided and weakened the state. “It is impossible to live in
peace with people you think are damned,” he said. He favored a “civil religion” that accepted
God, but concentrated on the sacredness of the social contract.
Rousseau realized that democracy as he envisioned it would be hard to maintain. He warned,
“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State, ‘What does it matter to me?’ the State
may be given up for lost.”

Sources
Aaron, Richard I. “Locke.” New Encyclopaedia Britannica Macropaedia. 2002 ed. • Abbott, Leonard Dalton, ed.
Masterworks of Government. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1947. • Conroy, Peter V. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. Twayne Publishers, 1998. • Cranston, Maurice. “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” New Encyclopaedia
Britannica Macropaedia. 2002 ed. • Ebenstein, William. Great Political Thinkers, Plato to the Present, 3rd ed. New
York: Holt, Rinhart and Winston, 1963. • Havens, George R. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1978. • “Hobbes, Thomas.” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia. 2002 ed. • Levine, Andrew.
Engaging Political Philosophy From Hobbes to Rawls. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. • Robertson, John.
“The Enlightenment.” History Review. 1 Sept. 1997. • Shackelton, Robert. “Montesquieu, Charles.” New
Enccyclopaedia Britannica Micropaedia. 2002 ed. • Shklar, Judith N. Political Thought and Political Thinkers.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Images: Wikimedia Commons

Cite as: Martz, Carlton. "Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau on Government." Bill of Rights in Action.
Constitutional Rights Foundation, Spring 2004.

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