Questions: John Locke and Liberal Political Philosophy

Question 1

A student argues: 'Both Hobbes and Locke used the social contract framework, so they reached similar conclusions about how much power a government should have.' What is wrong with this claim?

• A. Nothing — both argued that individuals must fully surrender freedom to an absolute sovereign to escape the chaos of the state of nature
• B. It overlooks that Locke rejected the social contract entirely, relying only on natural law
• C. The frameworks lead to opposite conclusions: Hobbes's brutal state of nature justified absolute sovereignty; Locke's peaceful, rights-governed state of nature justified limited, revocable authority
• D. Locke and Hobbes agreed on government power but disagreed about who should be sovereign

Answer: (C)

Both thinkers used a social contract framework, but the character of their imagined state of nature drove them to opposite conclusions. Hobbes's state of nature was a war of all against all, requiring surrender to an absolute sovereign for security. Locke's state of nature was governed by natural law with natural rights already in force — people weren't fleeing chaos, they were protecting rights they already possessed. Because rights precede government for Locke, governments must remain limited and accountable; if they violate rights, the social contract is broken and revolution is justified. Same framework, radically different conclusions.

Question 2

According to Locke, what specifically justifies revolution against a government?

• A. When a majority of citizens vote to replace their rulers in a democratic election
• B. When the government fails to protect or systematically violates the natural rights of life, liberty, and property
• C. When a rival sovereign proves stronger in military conflict
• D. When the government is no longer popular, regardless of whether it protects rights

Answer: (B)

For Locke, the entire purpose of government is to protect pre-existing natural rights. The social contract grants rulers authority specifically for this purpose. If rulers instead violate those rights — by seizing property, imprisoning citizens without cause, or ruling arbitrarily — they have broken the contract and forfeited their authority. This is not merely permitted; it is the justified response to governmental tyranny. Locke was writing to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688, where Parliament removed James II for exactly these reasons.

Question 3

According to Locke, governments create and grant rights to their citizens.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

False — this is the Hobbesian view, not Locke's. For Locke, natural rights to life, liberty, and property exist in the state of nature, prior to and independent of any government. Government does not create rights; it is formed precisely to protect rights that already exist. This reversal is the philosophical foundation of liberal democracy: because rights precede government, the state is constrained by them and cannot legitimately abolish them. When Jefferson wrote of 'unalienable Rights' that governments are 'instituted' to 'secure,' he was expressing this Lockean idea.

Question 4

Locke's labor theory of property holds that a person acquires ownership of a resource by mixing their labor with it.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

True. Locke argued that since a person owns their own body and labor, when they mix that labor with unowned natural resources they extend their ownership to the result. This 'labor-mixing' argument justified private property as a natural right. However, Locke included important provisos: you may only take as much as you can use without waste, and you must leave 'enough and as good' for others. These limits on accumulation have been debated and criticized ever since — notably, they seem inconsistent with large-scale property accumulation — but the core argument that labor creates legitimate ownership was enormously influential in Anglo-American legal tradition.

Question 5

What is the key philosophical difference between Hobbes's and Locke's accounts of the state of nature, and why does this difference determine their conclusions about legitimate government?

Model answer: Hobbes described the state of nature as a war of all against all — without government, life is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' Because this is intolerable, people rationally surrender almost all their freedoms to a powerful sovereign who can maintain order. Rights come from the sovereign's grant. Locke described the state of nature as already governed by natural law, in which people have natural rights to life, liberty, and property that exist independently of any authority. Because rights precede government, government's role is protective, not constitutive — it must operate within rights-defined limits or lose its legitimacy. Hobbes's starting premise justifies near-absolute power; Locke's starting premise makes limited, revocable government the only rational outcome.

The state of nature thought experiment is a philosophical lever: whoever controls the description of humanity's 'original condition' controls the argument about what governments may legitimately do. Locke's move was to pre-populate the state of nature with rights and reason, which effectively limited what any government could do from the start. This is why Locke became the philosophical anchor for liberal constitutionalism — his framework made individual rights constraints on government rather than gifts from it.