John Locke and Thomas Hobbes are two philosophers who thought extensively on the subject of human nature and conflict in human society.

Machiavelli’s work The Prince is a contradiction of the political philosophy of his time. Machiavelli’s philosophy is to put all political power in the hands of a single person, who would make decisions for all of society, while above all serving in the best interests of himself. These interests included gaining, maintaining, and expanding his political power. Machiavelli promotes a secular society where morality is unnecessary, and stood in the way of an effectively governed principality. Although Machiavelli’s theories seem very authoritarian and against representative government it is important to note that during his lifetime in Italy there was a very unstable and deteriorating political state of affairs. His solution seems harsh and very risky; however he describes this Prince as a savior from the turmoil of his times.
During Machiavelli’s time in Florence, Italy was politically divided into a number of city states; these states were given greater allegiance by their citizens than the country as a whole. The governments of these city-states often changed
between dictatorships and republics, and this is illustrated by the history of Florence, where tyrannical rule was exercised by the Medici family from the middle to late l3th century before the restoration of democracy by Savonarola. The divisions which existed between these states were further aggravated by the frequent presence of foreign military forces such as France and Spain, who helped many factions gain power against their rivals. In particular, it was the Spanish who returned the Medici family to power in 1512 after invading Florence.
Although humanists of his time believed that an individual had many attributes to offer the state, Machiavelli was quick to disregard and even mock human nature. He generally distrusted citizens, stating in The Prince that “…in times of adversity, when the state is in need of its citizens there are few to be found”. Machevelli even had doubts about the loyalty of citizens, explaining that these people would not keep their word. Nevertheless, Machevelli insisted that the Prince never mistreat the citizens of the principality, based on the notion that this would also be in the Prince’s best interests. Furthermore, if a Prince can not be feared and loved at the same time, it is better to be feared, because according to human nature men are “...ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun danger and are greedy for profit…”. Machevelli believes men are self-centered and not willing to act in the best interest of the state and when the Prince “...is in danger they turn against him…” To win honor from the citizens Machevelli believes that the Prince must deceive them. By encouraging and honoring professionals these people would mind their own business while silently “...increas[ing] the prosperity of their state”. Through this deception, the Prince would achieve and maintain honor and trust amongst the citizens, especially those that were in the best position to oppose him. The Prince must also deceive those who attempt to flatter him with their political ideas, while pretending to take many opinions into account, the Prince realizes that men are only out for self-interests; therefore the Prince must act on his own accord, and none other.
Machiavelli believed a secular form of government would be the most realistic in benefiting the Prince while maintaining power and serving his own purposes. The Prince was Machiavelli’a only solution to Italy’s unstable government. Although it was the cultural, intellectual and artistic center of the Renaissance, Machiavelli did not believe these qualities would secure Italy’s political future. Accordingly, Italy required a leader that could command complete control over citizens and institutions. A secular government would achieve these ends, because, according to Machiavelli, men generally worked for their best interests and not the well being of society. This being the case, there was no room for them in politics. Machiavelli doubted that this form of government could outlast tyrannical rule, nevertheless, it was established years after his had penned The Prince, thus Machiavelli must be regarded as the founder of modern day secular government.


John Locke was probably one of the most influential thinkers and philosophers of the late 1600’s. John Locke’s views about government and politics are expressed in his Second Treatise of Government written in 1690. Locke advocates God-given rights for all human beings and that government is established to protect these individual rights. He argues that government exists by the consent of the governed. Locke also talks about the individual rights to property given by God for the use of the people. He discusses the possibility of tyranny in the government as well. Throughout his Second Treatise of Government, Locke’s view is that sovereignty rests with the people and not with the government.
In chapters one through three of his Second Treatise of Government, Locke explains how God gave all human beings individual rights. He says the power resides with the people and not with the government or a monarchy. Locke says “…yet the knowledge if which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity being so long since utterly lost…” (pg.3). Locke is implying that even if Adam was given political power over the people by God, his heirs have been lost in the races of mankind. The Divine Rights of kings were understood to be the right of a king to rule directly from God. Locke argues that since there is no proof that the kings were directly related to Adam, political power is solely in the hands of the people. Locke says, “…we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom…” (pg.9). Government, by nature, has no rule over man, man by nature seeks freedom, not authority, however, government is established to protect individual rights.
Locke believed that the right to private property, which is an individual right, originated from God when the earth was created. God wanted man to make use of all the things on the earth. God also gave man the ability to reason, to take full advantage of what the earth had to offer and use it for their own benefit. Locke says “whatsoever then he removes out of the state of nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property”(pg.13). He explains that once a person removes something out of its original state of nature, applies his own labor to it, the object becomes his own property
To be in a place where there is no government or jurisdiction and all the freedom in the world, seems like a good idea. This kind of freedom will allow you to do as you please, without the consent of anyone. It gives you the right to punish those who have committed crimes against you, as you may see fit. You are endowed with all the God-given rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This would seem as the perfect place to live. But if one were to carefully examine this type of living, one would realize the importance of a government.
This type of environment is discussed in John Locke’s, Second Treatise of Government. In the state of nature, there is perfect freedom, no one is controlling others and no one is being controlled, everyone is equal. Locke comes to say that the only way someone can rule over us is if we let them. There is no need for a central authority figure to govern the actions of people, in the state of nature, for it is the people, themselves, who impose the “peace and preservation of mankind”. Freedom can be obtained as long as one does not bother others in their state of nature. In this state, superiority and jurisdiction does not exist, whereby, men have the power to punish those who offend him. This element in the state of nature, where men are their own executioners of their offenders, can cause problems. The executioner can be more lenient on a person he prefers, and harsher on someone else, who committed the same crime. While all men are in charge of their own will according to the Law of Reason in which they are born, some men do, in fact, break or reject this law, which causes them to enter into a state of war with the others. People reject the law of nature for many reasons, especially when their ideas and opinions differ. One of two things may occur when people reject the laws of nature. The first is that one could enter into a state of war with someone else, and the other is that one could choose to enter into a state of society. It is reason that ultimately leads a person into the state of society through a social contract. The rights to punish others as they see fit is given up by men, when he leaves the state of nature and conforms to society and government. Instead, the social contract exists to protect people from those who transgress by inflicting punishment to offenders through the force of the government.
A further significant point that Locke made in his Second Treatise of Government was tyranny. A tyrant government often violates the rights of the people and abuses their power. Consideration of individual rights and freedom of the people are not cared for. Locke discusses how in such a government, the ruler works for themselves, and not for the benefit of the people, in which dissolution can occur. If the leader or the government neglects its obligations, the government is probable to failure. However Locke says that the conditions for dissolution are not likely to occur, “…such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs” (pg.70). Due to the ability that God has given us to reason, Locke is implying that revolts are infrequent. He is saying that since humans are capable of thinking and rationalizing, revolts do not occur for every minuscule problem the people may have with the government. Conditions for dissolution are based upon long term abuse by the government. Locke argues that dissolution creates a state of nature because a government would not be present. The tyrant puts themselves in a state of war with the citizens. In a state of nature, you give up the right to be protected by the laws and legislation. Civil Society differs in that you have a higher authority to seek protection or defense from. When the people’s liberties are dissolved, they are forced to establish a new government. Locke says, “…in these and like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative…” (pg. 67). The pervious chapters in Locke’s Second Government of Treatise, he discusses the individual rights given by God. The chapter of tyranny can be linked to the other chapters because it totally disenables these God given rights.
John Locke’s views seem to be clear. Locke supports the idea that all human beings have individual rights given by God and government is constructed to protect these rights. He establishes that the power resides in the hands of the people. Locke says that the government exists only by the consent of the governed. John Locke believes that with his ideology of individual rights and the government, a better life is achievable. Although, the absence of government seems like a good idea, it is still necessary. Government exists to protect the individual rights of human beings. It allows you the opportunity to prove your innocence if falsely accused, unlike in the state of nature.
Locke often refers to religion in his Second Treatise of Government, and is the foundation upon which most of his theories are built. The bases of Locke’s theories are constructed from the idea that all human beings have natural God-given rights. In further exploring with John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, I would focus on his religious aspects of individuality, private property, and the state. I would also discuss how and why people have natural right to property and the impact it has on the ruler or government.

The Leviathan is a classic of English literature which is noteworthy of containing a rational construction of natural law as the basis of positive law. In preference to common law; it provides a representative theory of absolute authority. Thomas Hobbes culminates a systematic trilogy on physical bodies, human nature, and body politic. He never departed from the concept of philosophy which he defined as the knowledge acquired by reasoning from the manner of the generation of any thing to the properties or from the properties to some possible way of generation of the same; to be able to produce as far as matter and human force permit, such effects as human life requires. The leviathan expounded the religious doctrine of a holy commonwealth in terms of revelation of divine law. The image depicting Hobbes¡¦s leviathan is of a huge man, whose body is composed of thousands of smaller people, all towering above a well ordered city below. This represents an all powerful sovereign who represents the people and is in a sense the embodiment of their being. The natural philosopher, Thomas Hobbes lived during some of the most tumultuous times in European history -- consequently, it is no surprise that his theories were thoroughly pessimistic regarding human nature. In The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes asserts that the ideal form of government is composed of an omnipotent Sovereign, whose only innate responsibility to his subjects is to prevent civil war, which Hobbes feels is the natural state in which man would live without government. The Sovereign, he claims, is appointed by the people of a nation as their agent to maintain domestic order.
Man is not naturally good, Hobbes claimed, but naturally a selfish hedonist -- "of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself". As human motives were, in their natural state, guided by unenlightened self-interest, these could, if left unchecked, have highly destructive consequences. Left unrestrained, humans, propelled by their internal dynamics, would crash against each other. Hobbes tried to envision what society would be like in a "state of nature" -- before any civil state or rule of law. His conclusion was dispiriting: life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", a "war of every man against every man". Nonetheless, as all people are equal in a physical not a moral sense, possessing a passionate love of survival and some degree of rationality, Hobbes concluded that a viable, working society would arise as equilibrium between these competing forces. The logic is simple. Any person's right of nature justifies violence against everybody else. Consequently, in the interests of personal survival, people will come around to agreeing that they should renounce their right to use violence. However, this yields up a tense and unstable equilibrium. The moment one party deviates from their promise, all will deviate and war restarts.
To keep society going with peace and confidence, then an artifice -- a Leviathan -- must be worked into the social contract. This Leviathan is the State -- whether in the form of an absolute monarch or a democratic parliament, it does not matter. The important point is that the State will be given a monopoly on violence and absolute authority. In return, the State promises to exercise its absolute power to maintain a state of peace by punishing deviants. Realizing that its power depends wholly on the willingness of the citizens to surrender theirs, the State itself will have an incentive not to abuse it. Of course, there is no guarantee that it won't. But when it does, it must brace itself for the consequences. . Unfortunately, most leaders, particularly African leaders, are misusing the power of the sovereign and do not want to embrace its consequences. The Leviathan states, "The first branch of the general rule of reason containeth the first, and Fundamental Law of Nature; which is, to seek Peace, and follow it. The Second, the Right of Nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend our selves¡¨. Encompassed in these two basic rights is Hobbes's entire argument for the institution of a sovereign ruler, which is firstly to protect a nation's citizens from all other citizens, and secondly to protect the nation from all other nations. If peace cannot be achieved by stagnation, then the duty of the sovereign, and by contract the only duty of the sovereign, is to mobilize his subjects and declare war on any nation that poses a threat to the stability of his own. One of the interesting elements of Hobbes's story is that concepts like morality, liberty, justice and property, have no natural, intrinsic or eternal meaning. They are pure social constructions. They are generated and imposed by the Leviathan, through his laws and institutions, to keep war and social disorder at bay. As history has shown, no set of values will last forever but will evolve as circumstances change. Hobbes is particularly keen to note that law itself is completely dependent on power. A law without a credible and powerful authority behind it is just simply not a law in any meaningful sense. Hobbes is thus one of the progenitors of "legal positivism", that is, justice is whatever the law says it is. For Hobbes, power legitimates, power is justice. The State -- whatever its form -- is always, by definition, right, as long as it is capable of maintaining civil peace.
Generally regarded as one of the most prominent "natural law" philosophers of the 17th Century, Hobbes had an enormous impact on subsequent British political, social and economic theory. Naturally, his idea of a social equilibrium between contradictory self-interests is strikingly obvious in the various aspects of economics to the modern day especially in Jeremy Bentham¡¦s utilitarianism where he expresses the Hobbesian hedonism_ ¡§Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the chain of causes and effects are fastened to their throne.¡¨ (Bentham,1780).
In concordance to Hobbes¡¦s views on the state of nature, the social contract and absolute government, sovereignty is the basis for a stable political regime of law and order and as to the whole doctrine, I see not yet, but the principles of it are true and proper. For I ground the civil right of sovereigns, and both the duty and liberty of subjects, upon the known natural inclinations of mankind, and upon the articles of the law of nature; of which no man, that pretends but reason enough to govern his private family, ought to be ignorant. The leviathan is the most complete expression of Hobbes's philosophy. It begins with a clearly materialistic account of human nature and knowledge, a rigidly deterministic account of human volition, and a pessimistic vision of the consequently natural state of human beings in perpetual struggle against each other. It is to escape this grim fate, Hobbes argued, that we form the commonwealth, surrendering our individual powers to the authority of an absolute sovereign. For Hobbes, then, individual obedience to even an arbitrary government is necessary in order to forestall the greater evil of an endless state of war.