Government in Plato’s vs. Hobbes and Locke’s Views

Subject: Philosophy
Pages: 2
Words: 305
Reading time:
< 1 min

According to the great thinker Plato, the ideal city being riled by the philosophers is considered to be based on the aristocratic form of government, depriving the citizens of their basic rights, worship, and choice of freedom.

The thinker’s aristocratic form of government is characterized as intelligent, wise, and strong, where the people live the life of primitive human beings. The occupation choice is concentrated on the ‘philosopher king’s assessment of the person concerning his talents. Besides, it should be stressed that Plato differentiated three kinds of classes, such as producers, guardians, and the king; the central idea of his philosophy is focused on the necessity to introduce the government being non-corrupt and uninterested in the power, which is the ‘philosopher-king.’

Nevertheless, unlike Plato, Hobbes and Locke supported contrastive theory on the basis of classical social contract tradition. It is necessary to underline the fact that the thinkers’ works disclosed the methods of liberal democratic practice development. Hobbes stressed the importance of absolute sovereign power, though allowing the following types of the commonwealth, such as monarchy, democracy, and aristocracy. The philosopher supported the monarchy as the most appropriate form, rejecting the possibility of self-government.

Locke was close to his ideas, being recognized as the liberal democratic thought father; he focused on religious importance, centralizing God as the political power, not the government. Locke stressed that the rights could be given to people only by the will of God, rather than the corrupt government. The comparative analysis of the philosophers’ government forms theories gives an opportunity to state that the liberal thoughts developed by Hobbes and Locke are considered to be more promising and practical in modern society rather than aristocracy introduced by Plato, through which the thinker opened the ways for tyranny development.