Western Social and Political Philosophy I: Plato, the Social Contract, Berlin on Liberty and Williams on Equality

Unit 8, "Social and Political Philosophy: Western", runs from Plato to feminism. This chapter takes its first four items: Plato's ideal state and justice; the social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau; Isaiah Berlin's two concepts of liberty; and Bernard Williams's idea of equality. NET Political Science's political thought chapter covers Plato, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau as political theorists; here the emphasis is on the arguments, the concept of justice, the logic of consent and obligation, and the conceptual analysis of liberty and equality, which is how a philosophy paper tests them.

1. Plato: the ideal state and justice

The Republic asks what justice is and whether the just life is better than the unjust. Against Thrasymachus, who says justice is "the advantage of the stronger", and Glaucon's challenge (the ring of Gyges), Socrates constructs a city in speech so that justice can be seen "writ large". The ideal city has three classes: the rulers or guardians proper, who have wisdom; the auxiliaries or soldiers, who have courage; and the producers (farmers, artisans, traders), whose virtue, with the others, is temperance, the agreement on who should rule. Justice is each class doing its own work and not meddling in the work of others.

City and soul in the Republic
Class in the cityPart of the soulVirtue
Rulers (philosopher-guardians)ReasonWisdom
Auxiliaries (soldiers)SpiritCourage
ProducersAppetiteTemperance (shared by all, as agreement)
The whole, each doing its ownThe whole soul in harmonyJustice
  • Philosopher-kings: "until philosophers rule as kings or those now called kings genuinely philosophise... there will be no end of troubles for cities" (Book V). Only those who know the Form of the Good can rule well; the long education of the guardians culminates in dialectic.
  • Communism of the guardians: rulers and auxiliaries have no private property and no private families; wives and children are held in common, so that no private interest divides them from the city. Women with the right nature may be guardians. The "noble lie" (myth of the metals) says citizens have gold, silver or bronze and iron in their souls, fitting them for their class.
  • Criticisms: Aristotle (Politics II) objected that excessive unity destroys a city and that common property is neglected; Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) read the Republic as a blueprint for a closed, totalitarian society.

2. The social contract: Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau

Social contract theory explains and justifies political authority by imagining people in a state of nature, without government, and asking what agreement rational individuals would make to leave it. The three classical versions differ because they picture the state of nature differently, and the kind of state each justifies follows from that picture.

Three social contracts compared
PointHobbes, Leviathan (1651)Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689)Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
State of natureA war of every man against every man, from competition, diffidence and glory; life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"Governed by the law of nature, known by reason; people are free and equal, with natural rights to life, liberty and estate, but lack a common judgeIn the Discourse on Inequality (1755), peaceful and self-sufficient; corruption comes with property and society ("amour-propre")
The contractEach gives up his right of governing himself to a sovereign, on condition that others do the sameConsent to form a political society and entrust power to a government to protect property (life, liberty, estate)Total alienation of each, with all his rights, to the whole community, which yields the general will
SovereignAn absolute, undivided sovereign (the Leviathan), not a party to the contractThe people; government holds power in trust and is limited by natural rightsThe people as a whole, whose sovereignty is inalienable and indivisible
ResistanceOnly the right of self-preservation survives; no right to rebelA government that violates its trust may be resisted and replaced (right of revolution)Whoever refuses to obey the general will "shall be forced to be free"
  • Locke on property: each person owns his own person, and by mixing his labour with what is held in common he makes it his property, provided he leaves "enough, and as good" for others and takes no more than he can use before it spoils (the Lockean proviso and the spoilage limit), limits that money later relaxes. Consent to government can be express or tacit, as by enjoying property within a state.
  • Rousseau on the general will: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains" opens The Social Contract. The general will aims at the common good and is always right, and it differs from the will of all, which is only the sum of private wills. In obeying the general will, of which he is a part, a citizen obeys himself, so civil liberty is obedience to a law one has prescribed for oneself.
⚠️ Rousseau's state of nature is not Hobbes's
Rousseau criticised Hobbes for projecting the vices of social man back into the state of nature. For Rousseau natural man is moved by self-love (amour de soi) and pity, and it is society, with property and comparison (amour-propre), that produces inequality and conflict. The "noble savage" phrase is not Rousseau's, though the idea is often attached to him.

3. Isaiah Berlin: two concepts of liberty

In his inaugural lecture at Oxford, "Two Concepts of Liberty" (1958), Isaiah Berlin distinguished two questions. Negative liberty answers "what is the area within which the subject is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?" It is freedom from coercion by others, the liberty of Hobbes, Bentham and Mill. Positive liberty answers "what, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?" It is the wish to be one's own master, self-direction or self-realisation.

Berlin's warning is about positive liberty. Once the self is divided into a "higher", rational self and a "lower", empirical self driven by desire, it becomes possible to coerce people in the name of what their real selves would choose, and to claim, with Rousseau, that they are being forced to be free. Historically, he argued, this inversion has justified tyranny. He defended a pluralism of values, holding that genuine goods such as liberty, equality and justice can conflict irreducibly, so that no single political ideal can harmonise them all, and that this is itself a reason to protect a minimum area of negative liberty.

4. Bernard Williams: the idea of equality

Bernard Williams's essay "The Idea of Equality" (1962) asks what can be meant by saying that all human beings are equal, when they plainly differ in strength, intelligence and virtue. He finds content in two places. First, all human beings share certain characteristics that ground equal moral consideration, above all the capacity to feel pain and affection and to have a view of their own lives; respect requires the "human point of view", seeing a person as he sees himself, not merely under the "technical" title of his role or function.

  • Equality in the distribution of goods: some goods have a relevant ground of distribution built into them. "The proper ground of distribution of medical care is ill health": if treatment goes by wealth instead, an irrational state of affairs results, and equality demands that need, not ability to pay, govern access.
  • Equality of opportunity: Williams's example is a warrior society in which the warrior class is opened to all, but selection is by a strength that only the well-fed, already privileged children have. Formal openness is empty if the conditions that develop the relevant abilities are unequal, so equality of opportunity, taken seriously, pushes toward equalising the background conditions themselves, and it cannot stop at a purely formal level.
🎯 Why liberty and equality can conflict
Berlin's value pluralism and Williams's analysis meet here. Pursuing equality of opportunity to the end would require interfering with families and markets, reducing negative liberty; protecting negative liberty leaves inequalities of condition in place. Both thinkers resisted the idea that one value simply trumps the other, and this tension is taken up by Rawls, Nozick and Dworkin in the next chapter.

Key takeaways

  • Plato: three classes (rulers, auxiliaries, producers) matching reason, spirit and appetite; justice as each doing its own; philosopher-kings; communism of the guardians; the noble lie; criticised by Aristotle and Popper.
  • Hobbes (1651): war of all against all, absolute sovereign, no right of rebellion. Locke (1689): law of nature, life, liberty and estate, property by labour with the proviso, limited government by consent, right of revolution.
  • Rousseau (1762): "born free, everywhere in chains"; total alienation to the community; the general will against the will of all; inalienable popular sovereignty; "forced to be free".
  • Berlin (1958): negative liberty (freedom from interference) against positive liberty (self-mastery); the danger of the divided self; value pluralism.
  • Williams (1962): equal respect from the human point of view; need as the proper ground of medical care; the warrior society shows formal equality of opportunity is not enough.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. Who described life in the state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"?

    1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    2. Plato
    3. John Locke
    4. Thomas Hobbes
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Thomas Hobbes

    The phrase is from Hobbes's Leviathan (1651), chapter 13. Locke's state of nature is governed by natural law, and Rousseau's natural man is peaceful and self-sufficient.

  2. Berlin defines positive liberty as:

    1. Equality of opportunity in education
    2. The wish to be one's own master
    3. The area within which one is left alone by others
    4. The absence of legal restrictions on trade
    Show answer

    Answer: B — The wish to be one's own master

    Positive liberty answers "who is the source of control?", and its answer is self-mastery. The area within which one is left alone is negative liberty; the other options are not Berlin's definitions.

  3. In Plato's Republic, the virtue of the auxiliaries (soldiers) is:

    1. Piety
    2. Courage
    3. Wisdom
    4. Justice
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Courage

    The auxiliaries correspond to the spirited part of the soul and have courage. Wisdom belongs to the rulers, temperance is shared agreement, and justice is the whole arrangement of each doing its own.

  4. Bernard Williams's example of a "warrior society" is meant to show that:

    1. Liberty always takes priority over equality
    2. A society of warriors is more just than a commercial one
    3. Medical care should be distributed by merit
    4. Formal equality of opportunity is empty if the conditions for developing abilities are unequal
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Formal equality of opportunity is empty if the conditions for developing abilities are unequal

    Opening the warrior class to all while selecting by a strength only the privileged possess leaves opportunity unequal in substance. Williams argues that medical care should go by need, not merit, and he does not assert a general priority of liberty.

  5. For Rousseau, the difference between the general will and the will of all is that:

    1. The general will aims at the common good, while the will of all is a sum of private wills
    2. The general will belongs to the sovereign monarch, the will of all to the people
    3. The general will is the will of the majority, while the will of all requires unanimity
    4. The general will is known by revelation, the will of all by reason
    Show answer

    Answer: A — The general will aims at the common good, while the will of all is a sum of private wills

    The Social Contract (II.3) distinguishes the general will, which considers only the common interest, from the will of all, which considers private interest and is merely a sum of particular wills. Sovereignty for Rousseau belongs to the people, not a monarch.

  6. Assertion (A): Locke recognises a right of the people to resist and replace a government. Reason (R): For Locke, government holds power in trust to protect life, liberty and estate. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

    Both are true and R explains A: because power is held in trust for a purpose, a government that violates the trust forfeits it and the people may resist and establish another.

  7. Assertion (A): Berlin warned that positive liberty can be turned into a justification for coercion. Reason (R): Berlin was a monist who held that all genuine values can be harmonised in a single ideal. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: C — A is true, but R is false

    A is true: dividing the self into a higher and a lower self lets coercion be presented as liberation. R is false: Berlin was a value pluralist who held that genuine values can conflict irreducibly.

  8. Which of the following are features of Hobbes's political theory? Select all that apply.

    1. Sovereignty is absolute and undivided
    2. The sovereign is not a party to the contract
    3. Subjects retain the right of self-preservation
    4. The people may overthrow a government that breaks its trust
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Sovereignty is absolute and undivided; B — The sovereign is not a party to the contract; C — Subjects retain the right of self-preservation

    For Hobbes subjects covenant with one another, the sovereign is not a party, sovereignty is absolute and undivided, and only the right to self-preservation survives. The right to overthrow a government that breaks its trust is Locke's.

  9. Which of the following limits on acquiring property through labour does Locke state? Select all that apply.

    1. Leave "enough, and as good" for others
    2. Acquire only what the general will permits
    3. Take no more than can be used before it spoils
    4. Hold property only as a trustee for the poor
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Leave "enough, and as good" for others; C — Take no more than can be used before it spoils

    Locke's two limits are the sufficiency proviso and the spoilage limit, the latter relaxed by the introduction of money. The general will is Rousseau's, and trusteeship is Gandhi's idea.

  10. In which year did Isaiah Berlin deliver "Two Concepts of Liberty"? Type the year.

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: 1958

    1958, as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford.