1001Philosophers

John Locke vs Thomas Hobbes on Freedom

Hobbes and Locke disagree about what freedom is and what political conditions secure it. Hobbes treats freedom as the absence of external impediments to motion: in the state of nature, men are formally free but materially miserable, and the sovereign's law produces the only meaningful liberty. Locke treats freedom as life under the natural law, exercised against arbitrary authority: legitimate government enlarges rather than constrains it. The Hobbesian free man submits to gain security; the Lockean free man retains rights against the state.

About this topic

Freedom — political, metaphysical, and existential — has been one of the principal preoccupations of modern philosophy. Political philosophers debate the conditions under which a person is free from interference or genuinely able to act, metaphysicians ask whether free will is compatible with causal determination, and existentialists treat freedom as the condition and burden of human existence. The quotes below trace these threads from ancient discussions of self-mastery to contemporary critiques of domination and autonomy.

For a side-by-side overview of the two philosophers more broadly, see the full John Locke vs Thomas Hobbes comparison. To browse philosophy more widely on this theme, see the Freedom quotes hub.

Representative quotes on freedom

John Locke on freedom

  • “All mankind being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

    Second Treatise of Government , Ch. II, sec. 6

  • “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

    Second Treatise of Government , Ch. VI, sec. 57

  • “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

    Second Treatise of Government , Ch. VI, sec. 57

Thomas Hobbes on freedom

  • “Liberty and Necessity (no. 111)”

    Give an inch, he'll take an ell.

  • Attributed to Thomas Hobbes:

    “Liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion.”

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