Locke

1
Locke

• David Walsh

2
Life and Legacy The Elusive Locke

• John Locke (1632 1704) is arguable the most
  influential of all political theorist. The
  success of liberal democracy and its embrace even
  by regimes that are founded on other principles
  reveals the power of his thought.
• The vision of Locke as a defender of atomistic
  liberal politics and possessive individualism
  is fading as a more nuanced understanding of his
  thought that synthesized modernity with the
  substance of the medieval Christian past is
  better appreciated.
• Locke discovered what was essential in politics
  and theology as a means of building consensus.
  From a modern perspective, his formulation of
  inalienable rights forms the field of legitimate
  political debate.

3
Life and Legacy The Elusive Locke - Continued

• Locke, was not a liberal democrat, but sided with
  the party that opposed royal absolutism.
• Locke became most politically active during the
  succession crisis of 1681 when Charles II sought
  to secure the throne for his brother James II.
  The Two Treatises on Government were written
  during their time but were not published because
  of the political circumstances.
• Locke spent ten years in Holland during this
  time.
• The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was launched to
  install William of Orange to the throne of
  England.
• Locke anonymously publishes The Two Treatises on
  Government in 1689.
• James and his supporters were decisively defeated
  at the Battle of Boyne in 1690.

4
Life and Legacy The Elusive Locke - Continued

• Locke published A Letter Concerning Toleration in
  1689 that dealt with the religious dispute at the
  center of the political crisis of his time.
• He published An Essay Concerning Human
  Understanding in his own name in 1690 and
  established himself as a leading intellectual
  light.
• On The Reasonableness of Christianity was
  published in 1695 and sought a common ground for
  Christian faith.

5
Questions for Reflection

• Can we imagine a better political regime than a
  self-governing society based on the respect for
  the rights of all? To the extent that we have
  difficulty coming up with superior alternatives,
  we live in a Lockean political universe.

6
Priority of Community

• Contrary to the common belief that Locke asserted
  individual rights at the expense of the
  community, the Lockean individual is firmly
  embedded within the community.
• Natural law teaching was being reinforced the
  scientific discovery of the laws of nature.
• An order of mutual obligation is essential to
  defend natural rights against those standing
  outside of a community of mutual obligation such
  as an absolute monarch.

7
Priority of Community - Continued

• Locke opposed royal absolutism and required the
  absolute authority to be part of an agreement of
  mutual obligations. This position is different
  than Hobbes who allowed the sovereign to be
  outside of this community of mutual obligations.
• Both Hobbes and Lockes sovereign depend upon the
  consent of the people.
• Power is important to both Hobbes and Locke, but
  Hobbes emphasizes it, whereas Locke emphasizes
  the priority of the moral community.

8
Priority of Community - Continued

• The Two Treatises emphasize the moral authority
  civil society exercises over its members with
  attention to limiting that authority as
  appropriate.
• Locke refuted Robert Filmers argument that
  political authority derives from God and is
  passed down from Adam to the sovereign of the
  day. Filmers position affirms the divine right
  of kings.
• Locke argues that each man is an inheritor of
  Adams authority and therefore government is
  based upon the consent of the governed. A person
  born into a commonwealth has given his or her
  tacit consent to be governed.
• The state of nature is a state of community
  without government and may suffer from the
  inconveniences of ineffective administration of
  justice.
• Prepolitical community exists in each individual
  and from mutual trust and recognition civil
  society emerges. A sense of common obligation is
  in each person from the beginning.

9
State of Nature

• Locke emphasizes the degree that trust can be
  placed in others.
• Hobbes emphasizes what must be done when trust
  breaks down.
• Both thinkers recognize consent is dependent upon
  the moral reliability of the giver.
• Hobbes focuses on a narrow sense of right,
  whereas Locke is more broadly focused on the
  good.
• Both develop the concept of a social contract.
• Hobbes uses the term covenant with theological
  overtones
• Locke uses the term compact with an emphasis on
  enduring trust that does not depend on a purely
  individualist calculation of returns.

10
State of Nature - Continued

• The State of Nature has a Law of Nature to govern
  it, which obliges every one And Reason, which is
  that Law, teaches all Mankind, who will but
  consult it, that being all equal and independent,
  no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health,
  Liberty, or Possessions. For Men being all the
  Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely
  wise Maker All the Servants of one Sovereign
  Master, sent into the World by his order and
  about his business, they are his Property, whose
  Workmanship they are, made to last during his,
  not one anothers Pleasure. (Second Treatise, par.
  6)

11
State of Nature - Continued

• Lockes piety has often been dismissed by those
  seeing it as a cloak for his secular reasoning,
  but the more we learn of his motivations, the
  more difficult it is to make such an argument.
• We are bound to preserve ourselves and when not
  in conflict with that goal to preserve the rights
  of others as an obligation to God.

12
Of the State of Nature, From Second Treatise,
Chapter 2

• To those that say, there were never a state of
  nature, I will not only oppose the authority of
  the judicious Hooker, Eccl. Pol. Lib. i. sect. 10
  where he say, The laws which have been hitherto
  mentioned, i.e. the laws of nature, do bind men
  absolutely, even as they are men, although they
  have never any settled fellowship, never any
  solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do,
  or not to do but forasmuch as we are not by
  ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with
  competent store of things, needful for such a
  life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for
  the dignity of man therefore to supply those
  defects and imperfections which are in us, living
  as single and solely by ourselves, we are
  naturally induced to seek communion and
  fellowship with others this was the cause of
  mens uniting themselves at first in politic
  societies. But I moreover affirm, that all men
  are naturally in that state, and remain so, till
  by their own consents they make themselves
  members of some politic society and I doubt not
  in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very
  clear.

13
Questions for Reflection

• Is Aristotle right that man is by nature a
  political animal? That we cannot really be human
  without living in community with others? To what
  extent does Locke confirm this by asking us to
  think about what life would be like without
  government, in the state of nature?

14
Property

• For Locke, the mutual preservation of rights that
  constitutes the purpose of civil society is
  primarily accomplished through the security of
  property.
• Property secures the right to life and right to
  liberty.
• A thief threatens liberty and can be rightfully
  killed, but the rights to thiefs property are
  retained by his family whose lives and liberty
  depend on that property.

15
Property - Continued

• Human beings have an inherent property right in
  their own persons.
• What a human takes from nature through the labor
  of his body and the work of his hands is his or
  her property.
• No one can accumulate more property than can be
  used before it spoils.
• Locke opposes a regime of unlimited acquisition
  and grounds property in the prepolitical
  community of the mutual recognition of rights.

16
Of Property, From Second Treatise, Chapter 5

• God gave the world to men in common but since he
  gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest
  conveniences of life they were capable to draw
  from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should
  always remain common and uncultivated. He gave
  it to the use of the industrious and rational
  (and labor was to be his title to it), not to the
  fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and
  contentious. He that had as good left for his
  improvement, as was already taken up, needed not
  complain, ought not to meddle with what was
  already improved by anothers labor if he did,
  it is plain he desired the benefit of anothers
  pains, which he had no right to, and not the
  ground which God had given him in common with
  others to labor on, and whereof there was good
  left, as that already possessed, and more than he
  knew what to do with, or his industry could reach
  to.

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Questions For Reflection

• How, according to Locke, does property become
  private when everything is given to human beings
  in common in the state of nature? Can you think
  of any other way of distributing property?
  Reflect on the inherently social character of any
  conception of property.

18
Transition to Civil Society

• Humans are bound together in the state of nature
  making the step to government relatively simple.
• Men cannot be judges in their own case, and an
  absolute ruler (Hobbes) staying outside the law
  does not move society to civil society since the
  ruler remains in the state of nature.
• Civil society gives a common measure by which
  differences may be resolved.
• Though kings have played a role in creating civil
  society, the security of properties is only
  guaranteed when the Legislature is placed in the
  collective bodies of men, call them Senate,
  Parliament, or what you please.
• The common authority requires a transfer of
  liberty of the legislative function to from the
  individual to the community.
• No man in Civil Society can be exempted from the
  laws of it.

19
Limited Government

• Consent is the assent to the process by which
  minorities will be governed by majorities.
• Legislative power is to be restrained by
  recollection of the ends of political society and
  government. The great chief end of government is
  the preservation of property.
• Restraints on the Legislative authorities
• The legislative power is bound by the laws of
  nature.
• The legislative power is bound to dispense
  Justice, and decide the Rights of the Subject by
  promulgated standing Laws, and known Authorisd
  Judges
• The legislative power cannot take from any Man
  any part of his property without his consent.
• The legislative power cannot transfer Power of
  Making Laws in any other hands.
• The legislative power being separated again,
  they are subject to the Laws, they have made
  which is a new and near tie upon them, to take
  care that they make them for the publick good.

20
Of Paternal Power, From Second Treatise, Chapter 6

• Man being born, as has been proved, with a title
  to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled enjoyment
  of all the rights and privileges of the law of
  nature, equally with any other man or number of
  men in the world, hath by nature a power, not
  only to preserve his property, that is, his life,
  liberty, and estate, against the injuries and
  attempts of other men but to judge of, and
  punish the breaches of that law in others, as he
  is persuaded the offense deserves, even with
  death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of
  the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But
  because no political society can be, nor subsist,
  without having in itself the power to preserve
  the property, and in order thereunto, punish the
  offenses of all those of that society there and
  there only is political society, where every one
  of the members hath quitted this natural power,
  resigned it up into the hands of the community in
  all cases that exclude him not from appealing for
  protection to the law established by it.

21
Right of Revolution

• The community retains the right to overrule its
  legislative leaders.
• The executive power has the power or prerogative
  to act decisively in the communitys interest
  even if it breaches the boundaries of law.
• No government has the right to obedience from
  people who have not consented to it. Abrogating
  this principle removes the possibility of
  community, a relationship based on anything but
  force.
• Force may not be used against legitimate
  authority but can be used against unjust and
  unlawful Force.

22
Right of Revolution - Continued

• Rebellion recognizes the state when a government
  has abrogated itself by becoming illegitimate.
• The dissolution of government does not return
  humanity to anarchy but to a prepolitical
  community that precedes the formation of
  government.
• The community can act through a representative,
  but the representative needs the community for
  legitimacy. The breakdown or failure of
  government is never ultimate since we carry its
  seeds within ourselves.
• Men who abandon the commonwealth are like beasts
  of prey and should be treated accordingly.

23
Locke and Executive Prerogative

• Locke defines prerogative as the power to act
  according to discretion, for the public good,
  without the prescription of law, and sometimes
  even against it for since in some governments
  the law-making power is not always in being, and
  is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the
  dispatch requisite to execution and because also
  it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to
  provide for, all accidents and necessities that
  may concern the public, or to make such laws as
  will do not harm, if they are executed with an
  inflexible rigor, on all occasions, and upon all
  persons that come in their way therefore there
  is a latitude left to the executive power, to do
  many things of choice which the laws do not
  prescribe.

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Locke and Executive Prerogative - Continued

• Lockes recognition of the power of prerogative
  reveals a tension in his thought between his
  defense of limited government and the need for
  executive energy in times of crisis. Can the
  precarious balance between liberty and security
  be maintained?
• Abraham Lincoln used executive prerogative in his
  prosecution of the Civil War. Does Lincoln make
  a strong argument for his use of executive
  prerogative.

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Questions for Reflection

• Given Lincolns extraordinary use of executive
  power during the Civil War, some scholars have
  claimed that he established a constitutional
  dictatorship. Are Lincolns actions consistent
  with Lockes view of executive prerogative? Can
  the notion of a constitutional dictatorship be
  reconciled with limited and free government?

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Of the Dissolution of Government, From Second
Treatise, Chapter 19

• I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulence
  of private men have sometimes caused great
  disorders in commonwealths, and factions have
  been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether
  the mischief hath oftener begun in the peoples
  wantonness, and a desire to cast off lawful
  authority of their rulers, or in the rulers
  insolence, and endeavors to get and exercise an
  arbitrary power over their people whether
  oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise
  to disorder, I leave it to impartial history to
  determine. This I am sure, whoever, either ruler
  or subject, by force goes about to invade the
  rights of either prince or people, and lays the
  foundation for overturning the constitution and
  frame of any just government, is highly guilty of
  the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of,
  being to answer for all those mischiefs of blood,
  rapine, and desolation, which the breaking to
  pieces of governments bring on a country. And he
  who does it, is justly to be esteemed the common
  enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated
  accordingly.

27
Quest for Religious Consensus

• Locke argued that rights and community were
  inseparable.
• His philosophical and theological works give us
  insight into Lockes major project that
  articulated the above stated truth.
• Locke sought the common ground of reason by which
  all intellectual, moral, and religious
  disagreements might be resolved.

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Quest for Religious Consensus - Continued

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that
  embraces a radical empiricism was inspired by the
  difficulty in finding a common ground regarding
  philosophical and theological concerns.
• By attempting to build up knowledge on the basis
  of the senses and reflections, Locke undertook a
  radical enterprise in the service of the
  principles of morality and revealed religion.

29
Quest for Religious Consensus - Continued

• Faith was the foundation of Lockes enterprise.
• That God has given a rule whereby men should
  govern themselves, I think there is nobody so
  brutish as to deny. He has a right to do it we
  are his creatures he has goodness and wisdom to
  direct our actions to that which is best, and he
  has power to enforce it by rewards and
  punishments of infinite weight and duration in
  another life for nobody can take us out of his
  hands. This the only true touchstone of moral
  rectitude. (Essay Concerning Human
  Understanding, Book II, Chapter 28, par. 5)

30
Quest for Religious Consensus - Continued

• In On the Reasonableness of Christianity (1695),
  Locke drew the outlines of what all denominations
  could share about Christianity based upon
  Scriptural authority.
• Locke accused creating purely rational religion
  devoid of Gods saving grace.
• Locke responded that he gave what the scripture
  gave and excluded human opinion.
• This work clarifies the role of reason in
  grounding political order.
• It should seem by the little that has hitherto
  been done in it, that tis too hard a task for
  unassisted reason, to establish morality, in all
  its parts, upon its true foundations, with a
  clear and convincing light. (On Reasonableness
  of Christianity, par. 241)

31
Questions for Reflection

• Consider the relationship between Locke and the
  American founders. The Declaration of
  Independence virtually quotes Locke in asserting
  a right of revolution, but the Constitution is
  completely silent about such a right. Is there
  such a thing as a right of revolution? If so,
  what kind of right is it natural or legal?

32
Tolerance as a Core Spiritual Truth

• Though reason and morality cannot ground
  themselves Locke rejects theocracy.
• Moral and political law require divine
  authorization.
• Divine authorization cannot replace liberty each
  individual has for self-government.
• The liberty of human beings is essential to the
  meaningful embrace of truth and therefore,
  tolerance is not an act of weakness, but
  essential for realizing the highest goods.

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Tolerance as a Core Spiritual Truth - continued

• Since you are pleased to inquire what are my
  thoughts about the mutual toleration of
  Christians in their different professions of
  religion, I must needs answer you freely, that I
  esteem that toleration to be the chief
  characteristical mark of the true Church.
• Theological truth rather than political necessity
  requires tolerance.
• Civil society is instituted to secure liberty
  whereas a church is the institution to lead
  individuals to theological truth. The Church
  cannot call upon the magistrate to enforce its
  rules.
• The Magistrate cannot determine theological truth.

34
Tolerance as a Core Spiritual Truth - continued

• Religion if it is true to itself must be a
  religion of liberty.
• Men cannot be forced to be saved.
• Freedom is the core of human identity and gives
  the individual transcendent dignity.
• The Magistrate cannot tolerate unlawful acts done
  in the name of religion.

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Tolerance as a Core Spiritual Truth - continued

• If an individuals conscience conflicts with the
  law, the individual should willing suffer the
  price of violating that law.
• Moral teachings that are contrary to the morality
  essential for human society are not to be
  tolerated.
• Treason, Atheism, and Catholicism are not to be
  tolerated.
• Equal rights are essential to the order of
  Lockes political community and the community
  cannot long endure the strains of exceptions.

36
From A Letter Concerning Toleration

• In a word, whatsoever may be doubtful in
  religion, yet this at least is certain, that no
  religion which I believe not to be true can be
  either true or profitable unto me. In vain,
  therefore, do princes compel their subjects to
  come into their Church communion, under pretense
  of saving their souls. If they believe, they
  will come of their own accord, if they believe
  not, their coming will nothing avail them. How
  great soever, in the fine, may be the pretense of
  goodwill and charity, and concern for the
  salvation of mens souls, men cannot be forced to
  be saved whether they will or no. An therefore,
  when all is done, they must be left to their own
  consciences.

37
Questions for Reflection

• What is the basis for religious toleration? Does
  Locke propose it because it will lead to
  political peace or because it is inherent in the
  freedom of the person? Think about what your
  answer may suggest concerning the nature of human
  rights the core of the Lockean political
  language that now dominates our world.

38
The Elusive Locke

• The possessive individualist Locke Most notably
  argued by Professor C.B. MacPherson, this
  interpretation tends to emphasize Lockes
  teachings on property rights, materialism, and
  the limited state as fostering capitalist
  development.
• The Straussian Locke Put forth by Professor Leo
  Strauss and his students, this interpretation
  considers Locke to be a Hobbes in sheeps
  clothing. According to the Straussian reading,
  Locke conceals the Hobbesian aspects of his
  political thought by offering a milder view of
  the conflicts and inconveniences of the state of
  nature. Lockes liberalism justifies a strong
  capitalist state that protects the natural right
  of property.

39
The Elusive Locke - Continued

• The Christian Locke This interpretation views
  Lockes egalitarianism in terms of Christian
  revelation. It takes seriously Lockes
  protestant spirituality as it influenced his
  political and economic liberalism. John Dunn is
  representative of this school of thought.
• The liberal-communitarian Locke This is the
  interpretation of David Walsh, the author of this
  chapter. In contrast to those who stress the
  possessive individualist Locke, Walsh emphasizes
  a more communitarian Locke who seriously applies
  Christian teachings of individual dignity and
  free will as the basis of a shared, equal, and
  free civil society. Locke provides a coherent
  defense of liberal values anchored in the
  spiritual dignity of all human beings.