How to Actually Use a Comparison Worksheet Without Wasting Afternoon
You pick up a Comparing The Ideas Of John Locke And Thomas Hobbes Worksheet and assume it will hand you a clean side-by-side breakdown. Most of them don't. They give you blanks that look symmetric but actually push you toward shallow answers like "Hobbes said government is good, Locke said government is okay too." That isn't helpful for anything beyond middle school. You need to know what to do with the material once the worksheet lands on your desk, because the real problem isn't filling in boxes. It's understanding why the two philosophers disagree on the state of nature, how they define consent differently, and where the worksheet will silently mislead you if you don't catch it yourself. Here is a realistic version of one you can adapt or use as-is. Print it, fill it with your own notes, and don't hand in the blank template unless your teacher specifically asked for the raw sheet. I use a modified version of this every semester when students struggle to move past surface-level summaries. Section A: State of Nature
Hobbes position: Write the exact condition of human life before government exists according to him. Locke position: Write the exact condition of human life before government exists according to him. Key difference: What changes when each thinker describes pre-political human behavior?
One primary source quote to support each: (From Leviathan for Hobbes, From Second Treatise for Locke) Section B: Human Nature Hobbes view of people:
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Locke view of people: Where this affects politics: Explain the link between their anthropological claim and their political conclusion. Section C: Social Contract Mechanism
Hobbes contract: Who gives power to whom, under what conditions, and is it reversible? Locke contract: Who gives power to whom, under what conditions, and is it reversible? Critical distinction: Does the contract bind the ruler or only the subjects in each version?
Section D: Rights and Property Natural rights according to Hobbes: Natural rights according to Locke:
Property origin: How does each philosopher explain where property comes from before the state? Section E: Government Authority and Resistance Legitimate power source (Hobbes):
Legitimate power source (Locke): Right to revolt: When, if ever, is rebellion justified in each system? Historical example where one theory fits better: Pick a real event and assign it.
Section F: Influence on Modern Politics Hobbes influence visible in: (institution, document, or practice) Locke influence visible in: (institution, document, or practice)
Which framework explains contemporary debates about security versus liberty better: Pick one and justify with a specific policy example. The worksheet works best when you treat it as a research scaffold instead of a fill-in-the-blank quiz. I had a student last year who submitted a version where both columns ended up saying essentially the same thing about consent. He had read summaries that flattened the distinction between Hobbes's irrevocable authorization and Locke's conditional trust. I made him go back to Chapter 17 of Leviathan and Sections 149 through 240 of the Second Treatise before he could finish the resistance row. He wrote a better final answer in forty minutes than he had in two days of copying from SparkNotes.
What the Worksheet Is Actually Testing
Most instructors hand out this comparison because they want you to demonstrate that you can track a single variable across two systems. The variable is usually sovereignty. Hobbes makes sovereignty absolute and indivisible. Locke makes it fiduciary and divisible in practice through institutional checks. If you write "both wanted government" you missed the point entirely. The point is whether government exists to keep people from killing each other or to protect pre-existing rights. Those are different purposes, and the worksheet should force you to show the causal chain from purpose to structure to consequences. Another thing worksheets rarely make explicit is the difference in method. Hobbes builds from a deductive model of human psychology driven by competition, diffidence, and glory. Locke builds from an empirical observation of how property actually forms through labor mixing. The worksheet section on human nature is where this matters most. If you treat their views as moral preferences instead of starting premises, every downstream comparison will drift into generic civics talking points. I also flag one common error students make on this worksheet. They conflate Hobbes's account of the state of nature with theological or medieval frameworks. Hobbes is explicitly secular in his reasoning. He does not argue from original sin. He argues from material conditions and psychological drives. When a student writes "Hobbes believed humans are sinful" on the worksheet, I mark it wrong because it replaces a political claim with a theological one. Same mistake in reverse with Locke. He draws on natural law tradition, but his argument in the Second Treatise stands on labor theory and rational self-preservation, not direct scriptural authority.
Where the Worksheet Framework Breaks Down
Comparison sheets like this create a false symmetry. They imply Hobbes and Locke are two points on one line. They are not. Their projects address different problems. Hobbes writes during the English Civil War. His question is how to prevent fragmentation and civil war. Locke writes after the Glorious Revolution. His question is how to justify limiting monarchy while preserving order. The worksheet format tends to flatten that historical distance into abstract boxes, which makes students produce answers that sound smart but ignore context. There is also a real limitation with any comparison worksheet: it encourages selection bias. You will naturally pick quotes that fit the row you are filling. I watch students do this constantly. They find a Hobbes quote about obedience and a Locke quote about liberty and declare the comparison solved. Meanwhile the Hobbes passage they ignored discusses the right of self-preservation, and the Locke passage they skipped discusses the prerogative power of the executive. The worksheet does not punish that kind of cherry-picking unless you build an anti-cherry-picking step into your process. A practical workaround I use is simple. Before writing any answer, you list three constraints the philosopher would reject. For Hobbes, that might include: divided sovereignty, hereditary legitimacy without popular authorization, and a right to resist punishment. For Locke, that might include: confiscation of property without consent, perpetual binding of future generations without ongoing consent, and executive power above the law. If your worksheet answer violates any of those constraints, it is wrong regardless of how clean the parallel looks on the page.
How to Get Actual Value Out of This Assignment
Start with primary texts. Read Leviathan Parts One and Two, and focus especially on Chapters 13, 17, and 18. Read Locke's Second Treatise, Chapters 2, 5, 8, 18, and 19. Do not rely on secondary summaries for the comparison rows. Summaries compress nuance into slogans, and slogans fail you on the resistance and property sections where the disagreement is sharpest. When you fill the worksheet, write your answers in complete sentences. Fragmented phrases like "absolute ruler" or "natural rights" look correct but communicate nothing. A complete sentence forces you to commit to a causal claim. "Hobbes argues the sovereign must be absolute because only an undivided power can prevent the return to war of all against all" is testable. "Absolute ruler" is not. Use a source-tracking row. Add a column to your worksheet for page or chapter references. I require this from my students because it catches lazy quoting immediately. If you cannot point to where a claim lives in the text, you probably paraphrased it from a blog post or misremembered it. The habit saves you during exams where instructors ask follow-up questions about specific passages.
If your worksheet includes a modern politics section, avoid generic answers about America. Name a specific doctrine, case, or statute. For Locke, you might reference the Necessary and Proper Clause debates or property taxation disputes. For Hobbes, you might reference emergency powers or the legal justification of surveillance states. Vague references to "the Constitution" make your worksheet look like you generated it without reading the prompt carefully. Finally, remember what this worksheet cannot do. It will not teach you the scholarship around Hobbes and Locke. It will not resolve debates about whether Hobbes anticipated contractualism or whether Locke's labor theory of property holds up under contemporary critique. If you need that depth, the worksheet is only a starting frame. You will need to move to secondary literature after you have filled the rows honestly.
