The difference in the approach of the three social contractualist thinkers starts with the difference in their understanding of human nature and psychology. Hobbes in Leviathan gave primacy to the instinct of self-preservation as the principle behind all human behaviour. Starting from the assumption that two types of feelings, desire and aversion are the moving factors in human beings, Hobbes stated that ‘what man desires he calls Good … and what he dislikes he calls Evil …’24 According to him then, what is Good is pleasurable and what is Evil is painful. If ‘self-preservation is continuance of individual biological existence, good is what serves this end and evil what has the opposite effect.’25 For Hobbes, it is true of human psychology that ‘the living body is instinctively set to preserve’ and as such man desires to preserve life.
Through his principle of self-preservation as the basic human psychology, Hobbes sought to establish that ‘desire for security’ is the fundamental need of human nature. Along with this principle of desire for security, there is an inseparable ‘desire for power’. As in the state of nature no one is sure of security and benefit of what one has or what one possesses, all seek continual power to secure what one possesses. Hobbes declares, ‘I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death … because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.’26 This continued desire for power leads to competition and perpetual ‘war of every man against every man’. As a result, man becomes a selfish, egoistic, and alienated individual, at war with others.
Locke in his Essays on Human Understanding explains the nature of man. For Locke, ‘desire is a feeling of uneasiness identified with pain, a feeling of which men want to get rid themselves.27 Thus, the objective of all human action is to substitute pleasure for pain. However, unlike in Hobbes, to achieve the objective, man does not stoop to selfishness, competition and war. On the contrary, for Locke man in state of nature is ‘sociable, altruistic and peaceful’. This is possible because human beings, for Locke, are rational and can discern and follow the law of nature. Since ‘rational people must concede that every human being has a right to life’,28 the state of nature is peaceful and social.
Rousseau’s view on human nature emerges from his image of man as a ‘noble savage’. In his Discourses on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality, Rousseau seems to suggest that man’s innate and uncorrupted conscience prevailed in the state of nature. Rousseau’s view of idyllic and romantic primitivism in the state of nature and noble savagery of man prompts him to declare that ‘a thinking man is a depraved animal’.29 In this statement, we find Rousseau’s rejection of primacy of reason, knowledge, progress of science and intelligence. Rousseau appealed to conscience, piety, sympathy and noble sentiments of man as the basis of progress and self-development of man and society. To him, two original instincts—’self-love or the instinct of self-preservation and sympathy or the gregarious instinct’ make up man’s nature.30 These instincts are beneficial for man as an individual and also as a group.
However, Rousseau needs to resolve the dilemma of self-love (love for oneself) coming in clash with sympathy (love or affection for others) as instincts in man when man seeks to satisfy both. To resolve this, a guiding principle grounded very much in the nature and sentiment of man is required. Rousseau finds this guiding principle in the form of ‘conscience’. Conscience is a sentiment, which is natural to man and prior to reason. Conscience makes man do right for himself as well as for others. But this being an instinctive expression, cannot itself tell what is right. It then, further requires another guiding principle that tells what is right. Reason, which helps man know what is right, guides him to do what is right. Thus, for Rousseau, conscience and reason in a man working closely harmonize self-love and sympathy and give rise to a society where man finds the fullest expression of his self.
In all the three social contractualists, we find a common understanding of human nature insofar as they relate to liking for pleasure or self-love and fear against harm to oneself. While for Hobbes, this fear leads to a situation of anarchy in the state of nature, for Locke and Rousseau, this fear is moderated by the sociable and sympathetic instinct in man. Hobbes blames the human nature for ills in the state of nature, for Locke it is absence of external regulation and for Rousseau, it is individual’s too much emphasis on a particular will. Their understanding of human nature shapes the views of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau on the condition in a state of nature and the terms of the social contract.
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