Sources in Conversation: The Commonwealth and the State of Nature

Over the course of the seventeenth century, England experienced two civil wars, the execution of a king, and the forced abdication of another. These dramatic events raised fundamental political questions, such as: What limitations exist on monarchical authority? What rights do subjects enjoy, and under what conditions can those rights be abridged? What means of redress, if any, do subjects have if their leaders abuse their power? The political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke developed the two most important theoretical responses to these questions. While their answers differed, they framed their analyses in similar ways. Both addressed two overarching questions: How and why do governments form, and what are the implications of the origins of the state for contemporary political conflicts?