What do Hobbes and Locke have to say about how society is formed? How does this relate to their ideas about what reason is?.
What would civilisation be like if "society", as we know it, was not formed? Hobbes and Locke tried to answer this by coming up with state of nature theories. The state of nature was a way of rationalizing how people would act in their most basic state. Hobbes believed that in a state of nature all men are at war, no one had any individual rights and life was a constant struggle for power ending in death. The search for power is the natural state of humans. Hobbes went on to say that nature has made men equal, even though some are more intelligent and/or stronger than others; they are still equally capable of killing each other. The "desire" to escape this equality, has led to laws of nature discovered by reason. Locke believed god was the prime factor in politics. In a state of nature he believed individuals born with certain natural rights given by god, not the society or the government. Everyone had the right to property as long as they kept too two rules. The first being that there is enough property for everyone and secondly nothing should be allowed to spoil. Locke also sees reason as a law of nature, which he sees is what makes people act civilised to one another.
Thomas Hobbes was raised in the English Civil War, which probably influenced his idea that living in the state of nature would off been one of total chaos. .
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal.