Why should anyone obey a government?

The town watch

Imagine a town whose courts have stopped working. Neighbors guard their grain, each suspecting the others of preparing a raid. Carmen proposes a council with a watch, rules everyone must follow and the power to punish. Once established, the council demands grain to support the watch. Later it starts seizing its opponents’ stores and dismissing their complaints.

Why should the townspeople obey this council, and when might they be entitled to resist it? Political obligation means a duty to obey a government, over and above the practical wish to avoid punishment. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke both connect that duty to protection, but they disagree about its terms.

Without a common authority

A state of nature is a condition in which people lack a shared political authority. Considering that condition helps us ask what government changes and what could justify its power. Our town is there to test arguments; it does not reconstruct the first government.

Neither author simply treats the state of nature as an imaginary episode from prehistory. Hobbes points to civil war and to relations between independent rulers; Locke, too, points to rulers who have no common superior. These comparisons are claims to examine, not evidence of a universal beginning, and imagining an agreement does not establish that anyone actually made it. [1] [2]

Hobbes: why promises need protection

For Hobbes, even the strongest person can be killed by others. This shared vulnerability, together with competition and distrust, makes it reasonable to fear attack. Carmen’s neighbors may arm themselves for safety, yet their precautions frighten one another; the problem does not require everyone to enjoy violence.

Hobbes calls this a condition of war even between fights, because there is no dependable assurance of peace. Reason tells people to seek peace and to give up some of their freedom to interfere with others, provided others will do the same. It also tells them to keep covenants, that is, binding agreements. Yet whoever disarms first may become easy prey. A promise alone cannot supply the security needed to keep it. [1]

Authorizing a ruler

Hobbes’s solution joins agreement to enforceable power. Each person covenants with the others to authorize one representative, a person or an assembly, to act for them in matters of peace and defense. Authorization means accepting the representative’s acts as one’s own, and it turns a multitude into a political body with a single voice.

The resulting sovereign, or supreme authority, can enforce decisions even against disagreement. On this account Carmen cannot keep a veto over every grain levy, because that would restore the competing private judgments the agreement was meant to overcome.

The subjects make this agreement with one another. It is not a contract in which the sovereign promises to meet conditions they can enforce, and so Hobbes denies that they can depose the sovereign simply by alleging a broken covenant. The result gives rulers formidable power and makes resistance hard to justify. [1]

Locke: rights before rulers

Locke starts with people who are naturally free and equal, and already bound by a law of nature that reason can discover: they must not harm one another’s life, liberty or possessions. His argument also invokes God, since human beings are God’s creations, not objects made for someone else’s use. A state without government, then, need not be a state of war. [2]

Its weakness lies in unreliable judgment and enforcement. People favor themselves, disagree about what the law requires and lack the power to enforce fair decisions. The town needs known laws, impartial judges and effective enforcement. Locke calls the lives, liberties and estates that these institutions protect property, using the word for more than possessions alone.

Government receives its power for that purpose. People cannot transfer an unlimited right to destroy or enslave others, because they never possessed such a right, and so even consent cannot give a ruler a right to do whatever they please.

What counts as consent?

For Locke, individuals consent to form a political community, and in doing so they accept majority decisions unless they agree on a higher threshold. The council need not obtain Carmen’s personal permission for every tax: consent given through the majority or through chosen representatives can authorize taxation. [2]

But what of someone who never joined? Locke distinguishes an express promise of membership from tacit consent, agreement inferred from conduct. Enjoying land, lodging or even travel within a territory binds a person to its laws for as long as that enjoyment lasts; it does not by itself make them a permanent member.

If leaving means abandoning home and livelihood, how freely has someone chosen to stay? The objection tests whether residence can bear the moral weight Locke places on consent, though it does not erase the distinction between consent and mere force. [3]

When protection fails

Hobbes leaves one crucial limit: people cannot surrender the liberty to defend their own lives. He also makes obedience last only as long as the sovereign keeps the power to protect them. Neither limit gives Carmen a general right to overthrow a functioning government whenever she judges it unjust. [1]

For Locke, the council holds its power in trust and must use it for the people’s good. Systematically seizing opponents’ stores and closing off redress betrays that purpose. When rulers seek arbitrary control over people’s lives and property, they forfeit their authority, and the people may establish a new legislature. Locke distinguishes such a pattern from ordinary mistakes and unpopular decisions. It is the people who judge whether the trust has been breached, which leaves a hard practical question: how can that judgment be made amid serious disagreement? [2]

Who receives protection?

Locke’s language of freedom does not make him an uncomplicated opponent of slavery. He rejects voluntary submission to arbitrary power, but he permits the enslavement of a captive who has, he argues, forfeited their life through unjust aggression. He also denies that a parent’s guilt passes to innocent children. These restrictions provide no justification for hereditary racial slavery. Yet Locke worked with colonial institutions, and scholars dispute how his principles relate to that involvement. [2] [4]

His property argument also privileges cultivation. He depicts Indigenous American land use as poorly productive, measuring its value against English agriculture. Scholars dispute how this argument supports colonial appropriation and how centrally that purpose figures in the book. The lesson on conquest and recognition supplies a question to bring back here: whose work and claims does a theory recognize? A promise to protect property leaves something crucial undecided until we ask whose property counts. [2] [3]

Try the distinction

Carmen says, “The town needs a watch, so the council may take anything it wants. Besides, anyone still living here has agreed forever.” Explain how Hobbes and Locke would challenge different parts of this claim. This exercise is optional.

Read a possible response

Hobbes accepts much of the first claim: private promises leave neighbors vulnerable to one another, so there is strong reason to authorize a common power, and his sovereign can make binding decisions about defense. Even so, people keep the liberty to resist threats to their own lives, and obedience lasts only while the sovereign can protect them. Locke presses harder, asking whether the council uses entrusted power for the public good. A properly authorized levy differs from arbitrary seizure to silence opponents, and systematic abuse can justify replacing the government. Locke also answers the second claim: he does not equate residence with permanent membership, since tacit consent binds only during the relevant enjoyment, while express consent has a different force. Whether someone unable to leave has meaningfully consented remains an objection to Locke himself. Neither argument proves that this town, or any actual society, began in a documented agreement.

Carry this forward

Hobbes makes the danger of divided authority vivid; Locke makes authority answerable to the purposes that justify it. Both leave us asking how people can live under common decisions without surrendering everything to those who rule. Freedom, inequality and a common will takes up Rousseau’s question of collective self-government.

Sources and limits

[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Project Gutenberg eBook 3207, for the condition of war, authorization and the limits of obedience. The eBook says its transcription follows the Pelican Classics text based on the first edition, with formatting changes. Roman numerals identify chapters. Read:

• Vulnerability and war: XIII, in full.
• The laws of nature: XIV–XV, in full.
• Representation and authorization: XVI–XVII, in full.
• The covenant distinction: XVIII, the opening and the first three consequences of institution.
• The limits of obedience: XXI, from “Subjects Have Liberty To Defend Their Own Bodies” through “In What Cases Subjects Absolved Of Their Obedience To Their Soveraign.”

Hobbes’s dismissive depiction of American peoples in XIII is his assertion, not an established description adopted here.

[2] John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Project Gutenberg eBook 7370, for natural law, consent, trust and property. The symbol § identifies a numbered section. Read §§4, 6, 13–14, 19, 22–24; 27, 32–34, 41, 43; 95–99, 119–126, 131, 135, 138, 140, 149; 176, 180–183, 222, 225, 240. Among these:

• The purpose of government: §§123–126.
• Resistance, and who judges: §§222 and 240.
• The slavery discussion and its qualifications: §§23–24 and 180–183.
• Land use: §§32–34, 41 and 43.

The eBook identifies its text as a transcription of the original from the 1980 Hackett edition; its introductory material gives inconsistent historical edition labels. This lesson uses the numbered sections without claiming a verified original printing.

[3] Alex Tuckness, “Locke’s Political Philosophy”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2020, §§2–4, for scholarly readings of property and consent. Section 3 discusses colonial interpretations of property, and section 4 explains A. John Simmons’s objection to tacit consent. The studies Tuckness discusses were encountered through this overview, not read separately.

[4] William Uzgalis, “John Locke”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 2022, §4.3, “Of War and Slavery.” This section reports competing interpretations of Locke’s theory of slavery and of his colonial involvement; it does not settle how they relate.

The primary selections are original English, not translations, and neither complete book was read. Sources accessed 18 September 2026. The town, Carmen and the exercise are original teaching material. No independent scholarly review or learner testing is claimed.