Hobbes And Rousseau

9 Pages 2234 Words

other men’s at a distance.” More importantly in dealing with equality, Hobbes believes no matter what power, strength or intelligence one possesses, his vulnerability to be killed is the same. Because man is egocentric, a man’s ego, for the most part, will drive his actions. Because of this, a cycle of competition will begin. This cycle of competition can be summed up as the state of nature.
In the state of nature, where the strong survive, life is not very good. In the state of nature, man is trying to fulfill certain needs, such as safety or life. Because of these common needs, Hobbes believes man searches for peace. Peace is then achieved through a social contract among the members of the society. Before the social contract to even begin, man must find others willing to go along with it. This becomes difficult because man is very untrusting in the state of nature. This distrust, however, is overcome by the fear of death. A fear of death and of equal vulnerability to it is common with all men and the driving force behind men coming together to form a social contract.
To create the social contract, every person must give up the right to judge them, and hand this power over to a third party, the state. The state is founded on a common belief system held by all the people in the new commonwealth. “The only way to erect such a common power, is, to confrere all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will.” (Hobbes) The state is all-powerful and cannot be challenged because the contract would then be broken. The only people that can break the contract are those who agreed to it, therefore the state cannot break the contract, because the state is a result of the contract. Now the Hobbes’s social contract has be...