Category: society-and-justice
Type: model
Associated thinker(s): Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Original publication or approximate period: Hobbes, Leviathan (1651); other authors construct importantly different versions
Difficulty: Beginner
Themes: authority, cooperation, security
Related experiments: The Veil of Ignorance and Original Position; The Ring of Gyges
Consider people living without a shared authority able to settle disputes and enforce agreements. They may want peace, but each must judge threats, defend claims, and decide whether others can be trusted. In a Hobbesian model, vulnerability and uncertainty can make defensive preparation rational even for people who would prefer cooperation.
This article uses Hobbes’s version as its main case. Locke and Rousseau construct different states of nature with different assumptions and purposes. They are not merely alternative descriptions of the same fictional village. Nor must the model be read as an established account of prehistoric humanity.
What problems arise without common authority, and do they justify establishing political power on particular terms?
The model isolates the functions a political institution might perform: assurance, adjudication, and coordinated protection. It can also expose the danger of an argument that assumes too quickly that every lack of centralized power is permanent violence. Both the starting assumptions and the proposed authority need justification.
Hobbesian response: insecurity can persist even without constant fighting because no reliable assurance protects cooperation. A common power offers a route out of that predicament.
Rights-limiting response: accounts associated with Locke grant moral constraints before government and use them to limit legitimate authority. Political power does not simply create every right from nothing.
Critical response: actual communities use norms, relationships, and decentralized institutions that a highly abstract model may suppress. A critic should identify which omitted feature changes the argument rather than treating “people can cooperate” as a complete answer to every assurance problem.
Hobbes’s state of war is not a claim that every individual fights every minute. The absence of a sovereign also does not mean the absence of all social ties in every author’s model. Finally, the model alone cannot establish that an unlimited ruler will in practice solve the problems without creating new ones.
Civil-war breakdown and relations among states can illuminate parts of the Hobbesian structure. They also differ from a wholly pre-political condition. Comparing Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau should begin by listing their distinct assumptions rather than merging them into a single origin myth.
The retrieved SEP Hobbes entry supports the main case and historical qualifications. This is an introductory comparison, not a complete exposition of Locke or Rousseau. Hobbes’s 1651 Leviathan is the identified primary publication; no universal historical origin is assigned to the model.
Research check: 2026-10-30. References above were retrieved for the support described; this is an original educational explanation, not a substitute for the primary texts. Additional speculative comparisons are teaching prompts, not established historical variations.