The Second Treatise of Government gives a different theory on politics from Hobbes" Leviathan, as Locke depicts a much more accurate view of how societies are to be governed, in my opinion. As opposed to Hobbes" theory of every person having rights over everyone else in the world, Locke's theory states that God has rights over everyone, and so no one has rights to others, or even themselves. He explains that the purpose of a government is to protect and regulate the people who choose to be governed by this body, and that the people choose to hand over their rights to the political power for stability and to avoid the state of war. .
In discussing natural law and the state of war, Locke describes how there in an exception to the concept of a man having no power over anyone else, as man may use force with right. When one man threatens or inflicts injury over another man or another man's property, then that man has the right to self defense and may "seek reparation from him that has done it so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered." Locke also states that any other man who finds it just may assist this man in seeking his reparations. I feel that this scenario sounds like a state of complete anarchy. Suppose a man threatens a woman with his knife upon seeing her trespass over his property. They are both threatened, and so the woman could gather a force of people who find it just to seek reparations for the man's wrongdoing to kill the man out of "self-defense", while the man was simply guarding his property. I do not understand how this concept maintains order. .
A concept in the first section that I find relevant in society today was Locke's idea that magistrates of any community should not have the power to punish someone from another community, "since in reference to him they can have no more power than what every man naturally may have over another.
