John Locke (1632–1704) is among the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Two Treatises of Government, he defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society. Locke used the claim that men are naturally free and equal as part of the justification for understanding legitimate political government as the result of a social contract where people in the state of nature conditionally transfer some of their rights to the government in order to better ensure the stable, comfortable enjoyment of their lives, liberty, and property. Since governments exist by the consent of the people in order to protect the rights of the people and promote the public good, governments that fail to do so can be resisted and replaced with new governments. Locke is thus also important for his defense of the right of revolution. Locke also defends the principle of majority rule and the separation of legislative and executive powers. In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke denied that coercion should be used to bring people to (what the ruler believes is) the true religion and also denied that churches should have any coercive power over their members. Locke elaborated on these themes in his later political writings, such as the Second Letter on Toleration and Third Letter on Toleration.
For a more general introduction to Locke's history and background, the argument of the Two Treatises, and the Letter Concerning Toleration, see Section 1, Section 3, and Section 4, respectively, of the main entry on John Locke in this encyclopedia. The present entry focuses on seven central concepts in Locke's political philosophy.Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries
[size=30]1. Natural Law and Natural Rights
Perhaps the most central concept in Locke's political philosophy is his theory of natural law and natural rights. The natural law concept existed long before Locke as a way of expressing the idea that there were certain moral truths that applied to all people, regardless of the particular place where they lived or the agreements they had made. The most important early contrast was between laws that were by nature, and thus generally applicable, and those that were conventional and operated only in those places where the particular convention had been established. This distinction is sometimes formulated as the difference between natural law and positive law.
Natural law is also distinct from divine law in that the latter, in the Christian tradition, normally referred to those laws that God had directly revealed through prophets and other inspired writers. Natural law can be discovered by reason alone and applies to all people, while divine law can be discovered only through God's special revelation and applies only to those to whom it is revealed and who God specifically indicates are to be bound. Thus some seventeenth-century commentators, Locke included, held that not all of the 10 commandments, much less the rest of the Old Testament law, were binding on all people. The 10 commandments begin “Hear O Israel” and thus are only binding on the people to whom they were addressed (
Works 6:37). As we will see below, even though Locke thought natural law could be known apart from special revelation, he saw no contradiction in God playing a part in the argument, so long as the relevant aspects of God's character could be discovered by reason alone. In Locke's theory, divine law and natural law are consistent and can overlap in content, but they are not coextensive. Thus there is no problem for Locke if the Bible commands a moral code that is stricter than the one that can be derived from natural law, but there is a real problem if the Bible teaches what is contrary to natural law. In practice, Locke avoided this problem because consistency with natural law was one of the criteria he used when deciding the proper interpretation of Biblical passages.
In the century before Locke, the language of natural rights also gained prominence through the writings of such thinkers as Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf. Whereas natural law emphasized duties, natural rights normally emphasized privileges or claims to which an individual was entitled. There is considerable disagreement as to how these factors are to be understood in relation to each other in Locke's theory. Leo Strauss, and many of his followers, take rights to be paramount, going so far as to portray Locke's position as essentially similar to that of Hobbes. They point out that Locke defended a hedonist theory of human motivation (
Essay 2.20) and claim that he must agree with Hobbes about the essentially self-interested nature of human beings. Locke, they claim, recognizes natural law obligations only in those situations where our own preservation is not in conflict, further emphasizing that our right to preserve ourselves trumps any duties we may have.
On the other end of the spectrum, more scholars have adopted the view of Dunn, Tully, and Ashcraft that it is natural law, not natural rights, that is primary. They hold that when Locke emphasized the right to life, liberty, and property he was primarily making a point about the duties we have toward other people: duties not to kill, enslave, or steal. Most scholars also argue that Locke recognized a general duty to assist with the preservation of mankind, including a duty of charity to those who have no other way to procure their subsistence (
Two Treatises 1.42). These scholars regard duties as primary in Locke because rights exist to ensure that we are able to fulfill our duties. Simmons takes a position similar to the latter group, but claims that rights are not just the flip side of duties in Locke, nor merely a means to performing our duties. Instead, rights and duties are equally fundamental because Locke believes in a “robust zone of indifference” in which rights protect our ability to make choices. While these choices cannot violate natural law, they are not a mere means to fulfilling natural law either. Brian Tienrey questions whether one needs to prioritize natural law or natural right since both typically function as corollaries. He argues that modern natural rights theories are a development from medieval conceptions of natural law that included permissions to act or not act in certain ways.
There have been some attempts to find a compromise between these positions. Michael Zuckert’s version of the Straussian position acknowledges more differences between Hobbes and Locke. Zuckert still questions the sincerity of Locke’s theism, but thinks that Locke does develop a position that grounds property rights in the fact that human beings own themselves, something Hobbes denied. Adam Seagrave has gone a step further. He argues that the contradiction between Locke’s claim that human beings are owned by God and that human beings own themselves is only apparent. Based on passages from Locke’s other writings (especially the
Essay Concnerning Human Understanding) In the passages about divine ownership, Locke is speaking about humanity as a whole, while in the passages about self-ownership he is taking about individual human beings with the capacity for property ownership. God created human beings who are capable of having property rights with respect to one another on the basis of owning their labor. Both of them emphasize differences between Locke's use of natural rights and the earlier tradition of natural law.
Another point of contestation has to do with the extent to which Locke thought natural law could, in fact, be known by reason. Both Strauss and Peter Laslett, though very different in their interpretations of Locke generally, see Locke's theory of natural law as filled with contradictions. In the
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke defends a theory of moral knowledge that negates the possibility of innate ideas (
Essay Book 1) and claims that morality is capable of demonstration in the same way that Mathematics is (
Essay 3.11.16, 4.3.18–20). Yet nowhere in any of his works does Locke make a full deduction of natural law from first premises. More than that, Locke at times seems to appeal to innate ideas in the
Second Treatise (2.11), and in
The Reasonableness of Christianity (
Works 7:139) he admits that no one has ever worked out all of natural law from reason alone. Strauss infers from this that the contradictions exist to show the attentive reader that Locke does not really believe in natural law at all. Laslett, more conservatively, simply says that Locke the philosopher and Locke the political writer should be kept very separate.
Many scholars reject this position. Yolton, Colman, Ashcraft, Grant, Simmons, Tuckness and others all argue that there is nothing strictly inconsistent in Locke's admission in
The Reasonableness of Christianity. That no one has deduced all of natural law from first principles does not mean that none of it has been deduced. The supposedly contradictory passages in the
Two Treatises are far from decisive. While it is true that Locke does not provide a deduction in the
Essay, it is not clear that he was trying to. Section 4.10.1–19 of that work seems more concerned to show how reasoning with moral terms is possible, not to actually provide a full account of natural law. Nonetheless, it must be admitted that Locke did not treat the topic of natural law as systematically as one might like. Attempts to work out his theory in more detail with respect to its ground and its content must try to reconstruct it from scattered passages in many different texts.
To understand Locke's position on the ground of natural law it must be situated within a larger debate in natural law theory that predates Locke, the so-called “voluntarism-intellectualism,” or “voluntarist-rationalist” debate. At its simplest, the voluntarist declares that right and wrong are determined by God's will and that we are obliged to obey the will of God simply because it is the will of God. Unless these positions are maintained, the voluntarist argues, God becomes superfluous to morality since both the content and the binding force of morality can be explained without reference to God. The intellectualist replies that this understanding makes morality arbitrary and fails to explain why we have an obligation to obey God.
With respect to the grounds and content of natural law, Locke is not completely clear. On the one hand, there are many instances where he makes statements that sound voluntarist to the effect that law requires a law giver with authority (
Essay 1.3.6, 4.10.7). Locke also repeatedly insists in the
Essays on the Law of Nature that created beings have an obligation to obey their creator (
ELN6). On the other hand there are statements that seem to imply an external moral standard to which God must conform (
Two Treatises 2.195;
Works 7:6). Locke clearly wants to avoid the implication that the content of natural law is arbitrary. Several solutions have been proposed. One solution suggested by Herzog makes Locke an intellectualist by grounding our obligation to obey God on a prior duty of gratitude that exists independent of God. A second option, suggested by Simmons, is simply to take Locke as a voluntarist since that is where the preponderance of his statements point. A third option, suggested by Tuckness (and implied by Grant), is to treat the question of voluntarism as having two different parts, grounds and content. On this view, Locke was indeed a voluntarist with respect to the question “why should we obey the law of nature?” Locke thought that reason, apart from the will of a superior, could only be advisory. With respect to content, divine reason and human reason must be sufficiently analogous that human beings can reason about what God likely wills. Locke takes it for granted that since God created us with reason in order to follow God's will, human reason and divine reason are sufficiently similar that natural law will not seem arbitrary to us.
Those interested in the contemporary relevance of Locke's political theory must confront its theological aspects. Straussians make Locke's theory relevant by claiming that the theological dimensions of his thought are primarily rhetorical; they are “cover” to keep him from being persecuted by the religious authorities of his day. Others, such as Dunn, take Locke to be of only limited relevance to contemporary politics precisely because so many of his arguments depend on religious assumptions that are no longer widely shared. More recently a number of authors, such as Simmons and Vernon, have tried to separate the foundations of Locke's argument from other aspects of it. Simmons, for example, argues that Locke's thought is over-determined, containing both religious and secular arguments. He claims that for Locke the fundamental law of nature is that “as much as possible mankind is to be preserved” (
Two Treatises 135). At times, he claims, Locke presents this principle in rule-consequentialist terms: it is the principle we use to determine the more specific rights and duties that all have. At other times, Locke hints at a more Kantian justification that emphasizes the impropriety of treating our equals as if they were mere means to our ends. Waldron, in his most recent work on Locke, explores the opposite claim: that Locke's theology actually provides a more solid basis for his premise of political equality than do contemporary secular approaches that tend to simply assert equality.
With respect to the specific content of natural law, Locke never provides a comprehensive statement of what it requires. In the
Two Treatises, Locke frequently states that the fundamental law of nature is that as much as possible mankind is to be preserved. Simmons argues that in
Two Treatises 2.6 Locke presents 1) a duty to preserve one's self, 2) a duty to preserve others when self-preservation does not conflict, 3) a duty not to take away the life of another, and 4) a duty not to act in a way that “tends to destroy” others. Libertarian interpreters of Locke tend to downplay duties of type 1 and 2. Locke presents a more extensive list in his earlier, and unpublished in his lifetime,
Essays on the Law of Nature. Interestingly, Locke here includes praise and honor of the deity as required by natural law as well as what we might call good character qualities.
[size=30]2. State of Nature[/size]
Locke's concept of the state of nature has been interpreted by commentators in a variety of ways. At first glance it seems quite simple. Locke writes “want [lack] of a common judge, with authority, puts all persons in a state of nature” and again, “Men living according to reason, without a common superior on earth, to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.” (
Two Treatises 2.19) Many commentators have taken this as Locke's definition, concluding that the state of nature exists wherever there is no legitimate political authority able to judge disputes and where people live according to the law of reason. On this account the state of nature is distinct from political society, where a legitimate government exists, and from a state of war where men fail to abide by the law of reason.
Simmons presents an important challenge to this view. Simmons points out that the above statement is worded as a sufficient rather than necessary condition. Two individuals might be able, in the state of nature, to authorize a third to settle disputes between them without leaving the state of nature, since the third party would not have, for example, the power to legislate for the public good. Simmons also claims that other interpretations often fail to account for the fact that there are some people who live in states with legitimate governments who are nonetheless in the state of nature: visiting aliens (2.9), children below the age of majority (2.15, 118), and those with a “defect” of reason (2.60). He claims that the state of nature is a relational concept describing a particular set of moral relations that exist between particular people, rather than a description of a particular geographical territory. The state of nature is just the way of describing the moral rights and responsibilities that exist between people who have not consented to the adjudication of their disputes by the same legitimate government. The groups just mentioned either have not or cannot give consent, so they remain in the state of nature. Thus A may be in the state of nature with respect to B, but not with C.
Simmons' account stands in sharp contrast to that of Strauss. According to Strauss, Locke presents the state of nature as a factual description of what the earliest society is like, an account that when read closely reveals Locke's departure from Christian teachings. State of nature theories, he and his followers argue, are contrary to the Biblical account in Genesis and evidence that Locke's teaching is similar to that of Hobbes. As noted above, on the Straussian account Locke's apparently Christian statements are only a façade designed to conceal his essentially anti-Christian views. According to Simmons, since the state of nature is a moral account, it is compatible with a wide variety of social accounts without contradiction. If we know only that a group of people are in a state of nature, we know only the rights and responsibilities they have toward one another; we know nothing about whether they are rich or poor, peaceful or warlike.
A complementary interpretation is made by John Dunn with respect to the relationship between Locke's state of nature and his Christian beliefs. Dunn claimed that Locke's state of nature is less an exercise in historical anthropology than a theological reflection on the condition of man. On Dunn's interpretation, Locke's state of nature thinking is an expression of his theological position, that man exists in a world created by God for God's purposes but that governments are created by men in order to further those purposes.
Locke's theory of the state of nature will thus be tied closely to his theory of natural law, since the latter defines the rights of persons and their status as free and equal persons. The stronger the grounds for accepting Locke's characterization of people as free, equal, and independent, the more helpful the state of nature becomes as a device for representing people. Still, it is important to remember that none of these interpretations claims that Locke's state of nature is
only a thought experiment, in the way Kant and Rawls are normally thought to use the concept. Locke did not respond to the argument “where have there ever been people in such a state” by saying it did not matter since it was only a thought experiment. Instead, he argued that there are and have been people in the state of nature. (
Two Treatises 2.14) It seems important to him that at least some governments have actually been formed in the way he suggests. How much it matters whether they have been or not will be discussed below under the topic of consent, since the central question is whether a good government can be legitimate even if it does not have the actual consent of the people who live under it; hypothetical contract and actual contract theories will tend to answer this question differently.[/size]
Locke's Political Philosophy
اليوم في 8:56 am من طرف