홉스와 로크의 자연권, 자연법 개념 비교연구: 리바이어던과 통치론을 중심으로

Abstract

This study attempts to answer the question “What are the concepts of natural right and natural law in the political philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke?” in order to further understand the concept of human rights in our time. It is because the term and meaning of “human rights” are derived from conceptualizations of “natural right” used in the eighteenth century. These conceptualizations of natural right are deduced from what human nature is, in other words, the concept of “human rights” is a synthesis of responses to what a human is, and what a right is. To answer the latter question, I trace the origins and developments of the concepts “right” and “law” from the Latin ‘ius’ and ‘lex’ from ancient times to Hobbes’ and Locke’s days. To answer the former, I draw out and summarize from their major works the two thinkers’ views of human nature. Firstly, I find that the meaning of “right” was originally related to, and derived from, “justice” until the eighteenth century, so I argue that human rights can be understood as human justice. In addition, I find that predecessors to the two thinkers understood the nature of a “right”as “a dispositional power or faculty” in the soul, and that Hobbes and Locke inherited these understandings. Secondly, Hobbes’ answers to the two question are as follows; There are reason as well as passions in human nature. Natural right, as it is the liberty to self preservation, is identified as the right to all things likely to satisfy men’s basic needs. He saw it as a cause leading the state of nature to a state of war that conflicts of natural rights among men in a society are indispensible because of the fact that each man has the natural right. Consequently, from this point of view he came to infer natural laws that restrict and regulate natural rights. Thirdly, Locke’s answers are different from Hobbes’. He believed that God imposed reason in human nature, and natural laws are God’s reason or God’s logos. So he argued the state of nature in which men live according to reason is essentially peaceful, and natural rights are imposed and constrained by natural laws. I argue that there is agreement between Hobbes and Locke around what a right is, but that they are not likely to agree with each other when it comes to the relationship between, and the foundations of natural right and natural law. Approaches to and perspectives on human rights have recently lapsed into law-oriented positivist research, and most researchers are legal scholars. I am not certain which thinker’s approach and perspective is better to understand the concept of human rights that is ironically getting confused in this recent trends, but I can say for sure that we should seek out and discuss what human justice is now, before the internationally or domestically established laws change our society, and our soul.