Hurley: Locke and Hobbes on Reason, Rights, and Laws

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For Hobbes, the Right of Nature is a right “of doing anything which…he shall conceive to be the aptest means” to “the preservation of his own nature.”(79) I want most of all to preserve myself, reason is a tool for telling me how best to preserve myself, so reason dictates this Right of Nature. Such a right does not come with a corresponding duty, as rights typically understood do (My right to property comes with a duty to respect yours, etc.). I have a Right of Nature, and I recognize that you have a Right of Nature, but my recognition of your Right is perfectly consistent with killing you and taking your stuff if that is the best strategy for preserving myself, and your recognition of my Right is perfectly consistent with your killing me. Reason is just a tool for getting what I want, my overarching want is for my own preservation, hence, it is rational to pursue to pursue my overarching want by any means possible, even killings you – the Right of Nature. For Locke, the Law of Nature provides each person with a presumptive right not to be killed by me, and provides me with a presumptive right not to be killed by anyone else, rights that come with corresponding obligations on my part not to violate the property and persons of others, and for them not to violate my property and person: “reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind…that…no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” (Ch II, Par 6) To consult reason is to recognize that I am “bound to preserve” myself (Par 6), but also that I am bound “to preserve the rest of mankind.” (Par. 6) Reason here sets substantive standards for justified interaction among persons. It is not merely an instrument for telling me how to get what I want, it dictates what any person is or is not justified in doing in their efforts to satisfy their wants. Moreover, these standards requiring respect for the life, liberties, and possessions of each person by each person are recognizably moral standards. We do not need to leave the state of nature to contract our way into morality on Locke’s view; rather, as rational beings we recognize that there are moral standards governing what we ought to do in the state of nature, just as there are standards of logic governing what we ought to believe.

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