Week 2 — Political Analysis Workshop · "Hobbes and Locke, Side by Side"

Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Objective: Objective 2 — analyze the social-contract tradition with the discipline's tools (source work + argument analysis + corroboration) · SLO A (political analysis & source evaluation)
Worth 50 points · Political Analysis Workshops group = 15% of the grade · Workshop 2
Mode this week: primary text. (Some weeks you'll analyze a real political text — a founding document, theory excerpt, court case, or treaty; other weeks you'll interpret real political data — election results, a poll, a governance index. Either way you'll end by catching an AI's mistakes.)

This is the course's signature weekly component. Every instructional week has one Political Analysis Workshop. This week you don't just read one text — you read two rival texts answering the same question, the way political scientists actually work when comparing theories. All sources are links to external archives — nothing to buy or download.

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned the vocabulary — power, authority, legitimacy — Weber's three types, the state's four criteria, and sovereignty. Now you'll run the toolkit on the tradition that first tried to explain how naked power could become rightful authority: the social contract.

The guiding question:

"Hobbes and Locke both imagine a world with no government and ask what people would rationally agree to. Why do they reach such different conclusions — and which premises are doing the real work?"

Two political texts, same hypothetical starting point, opposite endpoints. Your job is to find exactly where the two arguments diverge — not just note that they do.

Part 2 — The Sources (read them first)

Document A: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Chapter XIII. Author: Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher. Date: first published 1651, written during and just after the English Civil War. Type: a chapter from a major work of political philosophy — a systematic argument for absolute sovereignty.

Read the full chapter at an authoritative archive (links only):
- 🔗 Project Gutenberg — full text of Leviathan: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3207 (navigate to Chapter XIII, "Of the Naturall Condition of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery")

Two short excerpts you'll close-read here (quoted exactly from the Project Gutenberg text — verify them against the link above):
- Excerpt A1: "…the life of man, [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
- Excerpt A2: "…during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man."

Document B: John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), §95 (with §6 for context). Author: John Locke, English philosopher. Date: published 1689 (written partly in the years before, amid debates over the English succession and the limits of royal power). Type: a section from a treatise arguing for government by consent and against absolute monarchy.

Read the full section at an authoritative archive (links only):
- 🔗 Project Gutenberg — full text of Second Treatise of Government: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7370 (navigate to §95, and §6 for Locke's natural-law starting point)

One short excerpt you'll close-read here (quoted exactly from the Project Gutenberg text — verify it against the link above):
- Excerpt B1: "Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent…"

Both texts start from the same move — a world with no government. Hobbes lands on a war zone; Locke lands on a world that's inconvenient but not yet a war. That gap is not an accident — it's the whole argument.

Part 3 — Source-Analysis Scaffold (fill this in)

Complete each box in a sentence or two. This is the heart of the workshop.

Part 4 — Analysis Questions

Answer in a few sentences each:
1. The shared premise: Both Hobbes and Locke imagine a "state of nature" with no government to test what legitimate government should look like. What is this hypothetical actually FOR — why not just describe real governments directly? (Hint: think about what a thought experiment lets a philosopher isolate.)
2. The kinds: Give one claim from the excerpts that is best read as empirical (a claim about what people/the state of nature would actually be like) and one that leans normative (a claim about what people OUGHT to accept, or what makes power rightful), and say what would support each.
3. The divergence: Hobbes concludes that people should accept a near-absolute sovereign with no ordinary right of rebellion; Locke concludes that people should accept only a LIMITED government, revocable if it turns tyrannical. Both start from "people would rationally consent to escape the state of nature." Name the specific difference in how each philosopher DESCRIBES the state of nature (how dangerous is it, really?) that helps explain why they reach such different conclusions about how much power to hand over.
4. The audience: Hobbes wrote during and after a bloody civil war; Locke wrote in a political climate worried about arbitrary royal power. Point to one wording choice in the excerpts that reads like it's responding to its author's specific historical fear (e.g., Hobbes's emphasis on "war… of every man against every man"; Locke's emphasis on "free, equal, and independent"), and explain what work it does for that author's argument.
5. Weighing the theories: Which thinker's premises about human nature and the state of nature do you find more persuasive — and does that premise alone settle which conclusion (near-absolute sovereign vs. limited, revocable government) is correct, or is there a further normative step required even after you pick a premise? (Answer analytically — reasonable, well-informed people land differently on this question, and this course does not tell you the answer; it asks you to show your reasoning.)

Part 5 — AI-Critique Moment (required — this is the BYOAI step)

Now bring in your approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and be the political scientist who checks its work.

1. Ask it: "Compare Thomas Hobbes's and John Locke's views on the social contract, and give me a famous quotation from each of their major works."
2. Check everything it says against the real texts linked in Part 2:
   - Did it correctly say that Hobbes favored a strong, near-absolute sovereign (fearing chaos) and Locke favored limited, consent-based government with a right to resist (fearing tyranny) — or did it swap the two thinkers' positions? (This is the single most common slip on this topic — chatbots get it backwards often enough that you should assume nothing until you've checked.)
   - Did every "quotation" it gave actually appear in the correct text, word-for-word? (Search the linked Gutenberg text for the exact words. Chatbots fabricate convincing fake quotes, and sometimes attribute a real quotation to the WRONG philosopher.)
   - Did it correctly distinguish Locke's position from Rousseau's "general will" (previewed this week, full treatment coming)? Locke centers individual natural rights that PRE-EXIST society; Rousseau centers the collective general will — a chatbot that blurs the two has made a real error.
   - Did it correctly identify the dates (Leviathan 1651; Second Treatise 1689) and works (not, for instance, confusing Leviathan with Hobbes's other writings, or the Second Treatise with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding)?
3. Write 2–3 sentences reporting what the AI got right and at least one thing you had to correct or verify against the source. (If it happened to get everything right, explain how you verified each claim against both documents — that's the skill.)

The habit all term: the tool drafts, you verify against the source. A chatbot will hand you a quotation that sounds perfect, attribute it to the wrong 17th-century Englishman, and never blink — catching it is the point.

Part 6 — What to Submit

Submit a single document (or text entry) with: your completed Part 3 scaffold (all five moves), your Part 4 answers, and your Part 5 AI-critique paragraph (naming the specific thing you checked). Due Sunday, Sep 13, 11:59 p.m. (50 points).

Instructor answer key & model responses — REMOVE BEFORE PUBLISHING TO STUDENTS

Every fact and quotation below is verified against the Project Gutenberg texts of Leviathan (ebook #3207) and the Second Treatise of Government (ebook #7370), and against the standard historical record.

Part 3 scaffold (model):
- ① Sourcing: Hobbes (English philosopher) wrote Leviathan (published 1651) as a systematic argument for a powerful, largely unchecked sovereign, addressed to a country that had just lived through a devastating civil war; his purpose was to show that near-absolute sovereignty is the RATIONAL choice, not just a preference. Locke (English philosopher) wrote the Second Treatise (published 1689) arguing against absolute/arbitrary monarchy and for government limited by natural rights and consent, in a political climate contesting the limits of royal power; his purpose was to justify resistance to tyranny and government by consent.
- ② Contextualization: 1651 — England had just endured the Civil War (1642–1651) and the execution of Charles I (1649); Hobbes, having lived through real, catastrophic disorder, prioritizes order above almost everything else. 1689 — the Second Treatise was published amid England's Glorious Revolution and the ongoing debate over the proper limits of the crown's power; Locke, writing in that climate, prioritizes protecting individual rights against arbitrary royal authority.
- ③ Close reading: Hobbes (A1/A2): the state of nature is an active war of every man against every man; life there is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Key premise: without a common power, mutual fear and scarcity make constant conflict RATIONAL, not accidental. Locke (B1): people are by nature "free, equal, and independent," and no one may be subjected to another's political power without his own consent. Key premise: legitimate authority over a specific person requires that person's consent — rulership is not automatically justified by mere capacity to rule.
- ④ Argument analysis: Empirical-leaning claims: what the state of nature would ACTUALLY be like (Hobbes: violent and dangerous by default; Locke: inconvenient but governed by natural law that mostly restrains people already) — these are claims about human behavior under specified conditions, in principle informed by evidence, though neither philosopher ran an experiment. Normative claims: what people OUGHT to accept in exchange for security (Hobbes: near-total submission is a reasonable price for peace; Locke: only LIMITED submission is acceptable, because legitimate power requires ongoing consent). The pivotal divergent premise: HOW DANGEROUS is the state of nature, really? Hobbes's grimmer empirical premise (active war) makes almost any strong government look like a bargain; Locke's milder empirical premise (inconvenient, but restrained by natural law) means people have less to fear from staying more in control, so they need concede less power. Change Hobbes's premise to Locke's milder one, and his argument for near-absolute sovereignty loses its force — this is the hinge.
- ⑤ Corroboration: Strong answers might bring in Rousseau (this week's preview) as a THIRD social-contract account to triangulate; or a documented historical/comparative case of state collapse and reconstruction (Week 5's material on democratization previews this); or modern political-science findings on state failure and civil conflict, which could be used to test empirically whether Hobbes's or Locke's picture of "no government" better matches real documented cases of state collapse.

Part 4 (expected):
1. The state-of-nature thought experiment lets each philosopher ISOLATE the question of legitimacy from the messy history of any actual government — instead of arguing about whether a real king's claim to the throne is valid, both ask a cleaner question: what would people RATIONALLY agree to, starting from scratch? This strips away historical accident and focuses the argument on reasoning alone.
2. Empirical-leaning: Hobbes's claim that without a common power, people are in "war… of every man against every man" (checkable, at least in principle, against documented cases of state collapse). Normative: Locke's claim that no one may be subjected to another's political power "without his own consent" (a standard for RIGHTFUL power, defended by reasons, not settled by observation).
3. Hobbes describes the state of nature as an ACTIVE, ongoing war — mutual fear and scarcity make attack rational for everyone, so the risk is severe and immediate. Locke describes it as governed by a natural law that already restrains most people most of the time — inconvenient (biased judges, unreliable enforcement) but not a war zone. Because Hobbes's baseline is so much worse, almost any strong, unified authority looks like a rational trade; because Locke's baseline is milder, people have less to fear from keeping more power for themselves and their consent.
4. Strong answers note Hobbes's repeated emphasis on WAR and mutual danger ("enemy to every man") reflects his direct experience of civil war — it makes the cost of NOT having a strong sovereign viscerally clear. Locke's emphasis on "free, equal, and independent" reflects his opposition to arbitrary royal claims to rule by birthright or divine right — it makes CONSENT, not birth or force, the only legitimate basis for power over a free person, directly undercutting the monarchist argument he was writing against.
5. All positions get graded on reasoning, not verdict. Strong answers recognize that picking a premise about human nature (grim vs. milder) does NOT by itself settle the conclusion — a further normative step is required (how much risk of chaos is worth trading for how much individual freedom?), and reasonable people who agree on the same facts about human nature can still weigh that trade-off differently. This is exactly the empirical-vs-normative layering from Week 1.

Part 5 (AI-critique): full credit for a specific catch — most commonly the AI swapping Hobbes's and Locke's positions (attributing the near-absolute-sovereign view to Locke or the limited-government/right-to-resist view to Hobbes), fabricating a quotation not in either text, misattributing a real quotation to the wrong philosopher, or blurring Locke with Rousseau's "general will." Full credit also if the student verified each AI claim against both linked texts and reported how, even without catching an actual error.

Grading rubric — 50 points

Quality gate (self-checked) — Fact-and-source-accuracy gate: PASS. The dates (Leviathan 1651; Second Treatise 1689), both authors' historical contexts (English Civil War for Hobbes; the debate over royal power leading into the Glorious Revolution for Locke), and all three excerpts are verified against the Project Gutenberg texts; the excerpts are transcribed exactly and correctly attributed (Hobbes = A1/A2; Locke = B1); the key correctly flags the Hobbes/Locke swap as the classic AI slip for this topic and distinguishes Locke's individual-rights framing from Rousseau's general-will framing; no fabricated quotation or source appears anywhere in this workshop. Evenhandedness check — PASS: neither thinker's account is presented as "correct"; Part 4 Q5 explicitly instructs graders to score reasoning, not verdict; both the pro-Hobbes and pro-Locke readings are given genuine, non-strawmanned articulation throughout the scaffold and key.