In his Essays or lectures to students as Censor, teacher of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, Locke argues that there is a Law of Nature — a basic system of morals — which is given to every man to know. The Essays were unpublished but circulated and had an influence on writers such as James Tyrell The law, he adds, is something which is the decree of a superior will God , and lays down what is to be done and not to be done, and which is binding on all men.
The moral law for Locke demands that some things are completely forbidden theft, murder , others depend on certain sentiments, periodic duties, or conditional attitudes.
Against the objection that the Law of Nature cannot be found, because not all people who possess reason have knowledge of it or that they will disagree over its content, Locke counters that possessing the faculty of reason does not necessitate its use.
Some prefer living in ignorance, while others may be too dull, or are slaves to their passions to raise their intellect to what is required of them to understand the Natural Law, and others still are brought up amidst such evil that they become accustomed to it.
Secondly, disagreement — what we now term moral relativism — does not indicate a lack of a law, but rather its existence. The theory of how we know things becomes a life-long quest for Locke, culminating in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
We can know moral laws through four different methods: inscription, tradition, sense experience, or divine revelation. Ignoring the last, Locke also rejects both inscription and tradition which were both connected to Roman Catholic theology in favour of learning morality with our senses and reason.
Man thus has purposes — to contemplate and to procure and preserve his life. Yet the moral law cannot be garnered from consent — from mass or democratic agreement, for the voice of the people is as likely to lead to fallacies and evil. In conjecturing that a good policy is one that can be obey both without fear or without conscientious qualms, Locke is possibly indicating that the magistrate also has the responsibility not to provoke a rebellion of conscience in the people, words that may reflect the growing sense of concern that the Act of Uniformity engendered.
After rejecting self-interest as a justification of natural law, Locke proceeds to reject the argument that utility forms the basis of the moral law. It is always useful to know that what are often portrayed as 20th Century debates on, say, utilitarianism versus deontology, have a long philosophical pedigree. The Two Tracts and the Essay are not political classics in the sense that political theorists, whose speciality is not the 17th Century, readily turn to them.
But they contain philosophical elements and beliefs that Locke was to work on and develop — especially the role and limits to government, conscientious objection to the misuse of power, and religious freedom; although he was to dramatically alter his.
What is the purpose of government? It is to be used for the good, preservation, and the peace of men. If men could live peacefully, there would be no need for a magistrate, but patently the Seventeenth Century was strewn with war and its effects, and the thought of permitting a generally peaceful, anarchic state of nature was still too absurd for Locke to contemplate, so he dismisses it out of hand. He then deals strongly with those who would argue for a monarchy based on a divine right to rule, presaging the critique of the Two Treatises.
The magistrate ought to meddle with nothing but securing the peace. In Scotland at this time, recall that the Covenanters were being put down for their rejection of Uniformity. Yet we are still far from a libertarian thesis on a restricted government, for in outlining his principles of toleration, strict rules apply as to whom may be admitted into the tolerant club — Catholics and atheists need not apply. In matters speculative and divine worship a man ought to possess absolute liberty, for these are based on his subjective understanding of the nature of the universe and of God.
The third area that the magistrate may be concerned in involves the general moral virtues and vices of society. In other words, those who argue for theocracy ought to be restricted in their speech.
The reason for this — and a mature political one — is that most men use power for their own advancement and those who are intolerant of others should in turn not be tolerated — such groups are not to be trusted with any path that may lead them to power and the overthrow of the liberties of others.
Similarly, factions ought not to be tolerated if their numbers grow to threaten the state. The option is to accept and tolerate such diverse Protestant fanatics — or kill them all; but the latter is not very Christian, Locke reminds his readers. Shaftesbury sought a policy of toleration against the Anglican policy to unify the Kingdom under its brand of Protestantism. The Church of England, as its name suggests is a particular nationalist brand of Protestantism in which Bishops sit with Lords in the Upper Chamber of Parliament.
Locke repeats the purpose of government of securing the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and stresses the separation of the Church and State in what can be seen as the glimmerings of his minimal state theory.
This, incidentally, is symptomatic of a mind-body dualism as it affects the political realm , in which a philosopher asserts the primacy and hence freedom of the mind while accepting the subjugation of the body, a dichotomy that Locke only gradually moves away from. By , for instance, we again see evidence of a change in his thinking towards Protestant dissenters Catholics standing outwith the Lockean picture.
In his second essay on Toleration Tb in the year he expands on his critique of uniformity. He demands what a policy ought to be if all dissenters are in error — should they be all hanged? But if there is a fear of them is it because of the manner in which they are treated by the authorities, or if there is a fear that they may influence other people, then why not let others choose by their own consent to follow or not, or if it is feared that supporters of dissenting doctrines shall multiply, then either dissenters are attracting others because of the truth or orthodox teachers have become slack in propagating the truth.
In notes for his Atlantis , he proposes stringent laws to deal with vagrants, demands that everyone work at their handicraft at least six hours a week, that limits be put on migration across parishes, and that tithingmen be put in control of assuring the moral purity of their jurisdiction one tithingman to twenty homes.
Between and Locke scribbled thoughts on the springs of human action. Thus prior to the penning of the Two Treatises , we find a John Locke who is becoming increasingly concerned with the direction of Restoration policy with regards to religious toleration, and although he remains very conservative in his moral outlook, the formulation of a new approach is evidently developing.
The government, he declares with a stronger and more influential voice, ought to remove itself from the religious matters of the nation. The separation of the state and religion is now paramount in his philosophy, all it needed was a structure within which such a minimal, non-interfering government could be justified.
It would be wrong to debase the coinage to match the number of notes that the Bank of England printed. Marxists, for example, assume Locke to have proposed a labour theory of value, whereas the libertarian economist, Murray Rothbard, argues that what Locke propounded was a labour theory of property, not of value.
For elsewhere, Locke observes that the fair price a term that has wended down through the ages from Aristotle is that which is generated in a market on a particular occasion, tempered by notions of Christian charity to avoid gaining excess profits leaving enough for others, as Locke advises for the enclosure of land. Labour — active productive labour, based on rationality and productivity — increases the wealth of the nation, it does not generate a system of fair prices.
There is a scholarly debate on when the Two Treatises were written. In opening the Two Treatises , diligence and perseverance pay off for the reader — and on a pedagogical note, I would recommend following Laslett beginning with the Second before the First Treatise. The First Treatise paves the way, as Locke advertises in his Preface, to justify government by the consent of the people. Chapter I. Secondly, since Filmer believes that no man is born free, men cannot [or should not be able to] choose their governors, thus government by consent is to be rejected on the epistemological grounds that the masses do not possess the intellectual wherewithal to elect their leaders.
But a description of affairs under absolute monarchy does not in itself provide a justification of establishing government on popular consent, nor does the presumption that men would live in a miserable condition rebut the claim for absolutism. Chapter II. Chapter III. Questioning the validity of the former does not imply a concurrent questioning of the latter. In other words, potentiality does not imply actuality. Locke presses the point — whence does Adam receive his power over others?
By becoming a father, Filmer thirdly argues and thereby provides a justification for his patriarchy. Chapter IV. The two are separable issues, and Filmer, Locke notes, often deploys linguistic ambiguities in his terms to assert his theory without actually justifying it. Chapter VI. This time, Filmer presents a justification: since the father gives life and being to a child he therefore possesses absolute power over him. A parent may, arguably, alienate his rights over a child, Locke notes, but a child cannot alienate the honour due to his parent, an argument Filmer ignores.
Chapter VII. Accordingly, power over resources and political power are distinguishable and should be treated as separate issues. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. If we are to have one ruler, we should know who that person is otherwise there would be no distinction between pirates and princes. How successful is Filmer in describing this?
Chapter X. Chapter XI. With such a convoluted theory, surely God would have given us indications as to his meaning, after all, Locke adds, Scripture tells us whom we can and cannot marry. Filmer offers several descriptions of Biblical characters possessing power, but Locke disallows them all. Firstly, Filmer says evidence of patriarchy is that the ruler possessed the power of death over people — to which Locke replies, anyone may have that power.
Secondly, the ruler possessed the power to raise and army and to make war — to which Locke replies, as can any commonwealth, or indeed, any individual can also possess that power, implying that the power to wage war is independent of sovereignty and is merely attached to the ability to raise an army. The rejection of the divine right theory of monarchy and of absolutism now complete, Locke turns his attention to outlining and justifying his own conception of government and the rights of citizens.
It is one of the greatest texts in political philosophy and deserves a close reading. He defines political power as the power of making laws and executing penalties, the preservation of property, and of employing the force of the community in executing the laws and defending the commonwealth from foreign attack.
Power, he stresses, must only be used for the public good. Locke outlines his theoretical construction of the state of nature. Given God gave the earth to all of mankind, Locke envisages the state of nature as a state of perfect equality in which each person has the freedom to do as he sees fit without asking leave or depending on the will of any other man.
Reason teaches man not to harm his neighbour or his liberty or possessions, but also that he is right to punish those who transgress against him. Indeed, aggressors — those who violate the freedom of others — live life by another implicatively unnatural standard, one that is irrational and thus dangerous.
So far has Locke moved away from his conservative Oxford days of erring on the side of magistrates. The state of nature is not just a theoretical conception, for wherever there is a lack of government or arbitrating institutions between men or nations, the state of nature presides.
But the state of nature is distinguishable from the state of war, a dissimilarity Locke criticises followers of Thomas Hobbes for not making. The state of nature is governed by peace, goodwill, preservation, and mutual assistance, whereas the state of war is a condition of enmity, malice, violence, and mutual destruction.
Incidentally, Locke deemed the West Africans enslaved by the Royal Africa Company to have been taken prisoners in a just war against them, thus defending, if somewhat naively, colonial slavery. Locke rebuffs the argument that a man can enslave himself to another, because, ultimately, he may take his own life and by so regaining his freedom thus deprives the slave master of his power.
Freedom, Locke notes in passing, is not something to do as one pleases, as Sir Robert Filmer [and many since] would describe it in order to reject it that is, a straw man fallacy. Chapter V. The expansion of private property also increases the net yield to the commonwealth that is, causes economic growth — something Adam Smith was to later develop. Private property also clarifies resource ownership and thus removes areas of contention. When a man mixes his labour with anything and by drawing it into his private ownership, he makes it more valuable.
The benefits of private ownership can be readily compared to those nations in which few people reside upon commonly owned tracts. To turn children out of the home before their reason has developed sufficiently is to throw them out amongst the beasts and into a wretched state. Once they are mature enough, children have the ability and hence the right to choose what society they wish to belong to; accordingly, Locke emphasises that parental power should not be confused with political power.
The society that develops from conjugal and kinship origins tends to posses commonly established laws and a judicature, as well as an adjudicating authority.
All men are equal before the law, including those passing legislation. The created commonwealth then possesses the power, a power delegated to it by the citizens, to punish transgressors and external aggressors and to protect the property of its members. In removing themselves from the state of nature, men hand over the power to punish to the executive; but where the process of appeal is lacking, men remain — or at least their social relations remain — in the state of nature.
When their property is not safe, then people cannot think themselves as being in a civil society. Community begins with consent, Locke argues, and this consent can only be majority consent, as universal consent is impossible to gain. Consent of the governed is the only justifiable form of government, but of course critics are going to ask for evidence for consensual government. Locke replies that the lack of evidence does not imply that early governments were not formed consensually, but because people were initially equal in the state of nature, it can be deduced that they consented to put rulers over and above them.
Any power given to the government was given to secure the public good and safety and the defence of immature societies from external aggression, but once the legislators or executors of the law sought to use power for their own interests then it becomes vital for men to understand the origins of government and the limitations to its power, so that they may find methods to prevent such abuses of power.
The decision to enter political society is a permanent one for precisely this reason: the society will have to be defended and if people can revoke their consent to help protect it when attacked, the act of consent made when entering political society would be pointless since the political community would fail at the very point where it is most needed.
People make a calculated decision when they enter society, and the risk of dying in combat is part of that calculation. Grant also thinks Locke recognizes a duty based on reciprocity since others risk their lives as well.
A different approach asks what role consent plays in determining, here and now, the legitimate ends that governments can pursue. One part of this debate is captured by the debate between Seliger and Kendall , the former viewing Locke as a constitutionalist and the latter viewing him as giving almost unlimited power to majorities. On the former interpretation, a constitution is created by the consent of the people as part of the creation of the commonwealth.
On the latter interpretation, the people create a legislature which rules by majority vote. A third view, advanced by Tuckness a , holds that Locke was flexible at this point and gave people considerable flexibility in constitutional drafting. A second part of the debate focuses on ends rather than institutions. Locke states in the Two Treatises that the power of the Government is limited to the public good. Libertarians like Nozick read this as stating that governments exist only to protect people from infringements on their rights.
On this second reading, government is limited to fulfilling the purposes of natural law, but these include positive goals as well as negative rights. On this view, the power to promote the common good extends to actions designed to increase population, improve the military, strengthen the economy and infrastructure, and so on, provided these steps are indirectly useful to the goal of preserving the society. In arguing this, Locke was disagreeing with Samuel Pufendorf Samuel Pufendorf had argued strongly that the concept of punishment made no sense apart from an established positive legal structure.
Locke realized that the crucial objection to allowing people to act as judges with power to punish in the state of nature was that such people would end up being judges in their own cases. Locke readily admitted that this was a serious inconvenience and a primary reason for leaving the state of nature Two Treatises 2. Locke insisted on this point because it helped explain the transition into civil society. The power to punish in the state of nature is thus the foundation for the right of governments to use coercive force.
The situation becomes more complex, however, if we look at the principles which are to guide punishment. Rationales for punishment are often divided into those that are forward-looking and backward-looking. Forward-looking rationales include deterring crime, protecting society from dangerous persons, and rehabilitation of criminals. Backward-looking rationales normally focus on retribution, inflicting on the criminal harm comparable to the crime.
Locke may seem to conflate these two rationales in passages like the following:. Locke talks both of retribution and of punishing only for reparation and restraint. Simmons argues that this is evidence that Locke is combining both rationales for punishment in his theory. In the passage quoted above, Locke is saying that the proper amount of punishment is the amount that will provide restitution to injured parties, protect the public, and deter future crime.
Even in the state of nature, a primary justification for punishment is that it helps further the positive goal of preserving human life and human property. The emphasis on deterrence, public safety, and restitution in punishments administered by the government mirrors this emphasis. A second puzzle regarding punishment is the permissibility of punishing internationally.
Locke describes international relations as a state of nature, and so in principle, states should have the same power to punish breaches of the natural law in the international community that individuals have in the state of nature. This would legitimize, for example, punishment of individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity even in cases where neither the laws of the particular state nor international law authorize punishment.
The most common interpretation has thus been that the power to punish internationally is symmetrical with the power to punish in the state of nature. Tuckness a , however, has argued that there is an asymmetry between the two cases because Locke also talks about states being limited in the goals that they can pursue.
Locke often says that the power of the government is to be used for the protection of the rights of its own citizens, not for the rights of all people everywhere Two Treatises 1. Locke argues that in the state of nature a person is to use the power to punish to preserve his society, which is mankind as a whole. After states are formed, however, the power to punish is to be used for the benefit of his own particular society. In the state of nature, a person is not required to risk his life for another Two Treatises 2.
Locke may therefore be objecting to the idea that soldiers can be compelled to risk their lives for altruistic reasons. In the state of nature, a person could refuse to attempt to punish others if doing so would risk his life and so Locke reasons that individuals may not have consented to allow the state to risk their lives for altruistic punishment of international crimes.
Locke claims that legitimate government is based on the idea of separation of powers. First and foremost of these is the legislative power. Locke describes the legislative power as supreme Two Treatises 2. The legislature is still bound by the law of nature and much of what it does is set down laws that further the goals of natural law and specify appropriate punishments for them 2. The executive power is then charged with enforcing the law as it is applied in specific cases.
Since countries are still in the state of nature with respect to each other, they must follow the dictates of natural law and can punish one another for violations of that law in order to protect the rights of their citizens. The fact that Locke does not mention the judicial power as a separate power becomes clearer if we distinguish powers from institutions. Powers relate to functions.
To have a power means that there is a function such as making the laws or enforcing the laws that one may legitimately perform.
When Locke says that the legislative is supreme over the executive, he is not saying that parliament is supreme over the king. Moreover, Locke thinks that it is possible for multiple institutions to share the same power; for example, the legislative power in his day was shared by the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the King.
Since all three needed to agree for something to become law, all three are part of the legislative power 1. He also thinks that the federative power and the executive power are normally placed in the hands of the executive, so it is possible for the same person to exercise more than one power or function.
There is, therefore, no one-to-one correspondence between powers and institutions Tuckness a. Locke is not opposed to having distinct institutions called courts, but he does not see interpretation as a distinct function or power.
For Locke, legislation is primarily about announcing a general rule stipulating what types of actions should receive what types of punishments. The executive power is the power to make the judgments necessary to apply those rules to specific cases and administer force as directed by the rule Two Treatises 2. Both of these actions involve interpretation.
In other words, the executive must interpret the laws in light of its understanding of natural law. Similarly, legislation involves making the laws of nature more specific and determining how to apply them to particular circumstances 2. Locke did not think of interpreting law as a distinct function because he thought it was a part of both the legislative and executive functions Tuckness a.
It is more the terminology than the concepts that have changed. Locke considered arresting a person, trying a person, and punishing a person as all part of the function of executing the law rather than as a distinct function Tuckness a. Locke believed that it was important that the legislative power contain an assembly of elected representatives, but as we have seen the legislative power could contain monarchical and aristocratic elements as well.
Locke was more concerned that the people have representatives with sufficient power to block attacks on their liberty and attempts to tax them without justification. This is important because Locke also affirms that the community remains the real supreme power throughout. This can happen for a variety of reasons. The entire society can be dissolved by a successful foreign invasion 2. If the rule of law is ignored, if the representatives of the people are prevented from assembling, if the mechanisms of election are altered without popular consent, or if the people are handed over to a foreign power, then they can take back their original authority and overthrow the government 2.
They can also rebel if the government attempts to take away their rights 2. Locke thinks this is justifiable since oppressed people will likely rebel anyway, and those who are not oppressed will be unlikely to rebel. Moreover, the threat of possible rebellion makes tyranny less likely to start with 2.
For all these reasons, while there are a variety of legitimate constitutional forms, the delegation of power under any constitution is understood to be conditional. Prerogative is the right of the executive to act without explicit authorization for a law, or even contrary to the law, in order to better fulfill the laws that seek the preservation of human life.
A king might, for example, order that a house be torn down in order to stop a fire from spreading throughout a city Two Treatises 2. Locke handles this by explaining that the rationale for this power is that general rules cannot cover all possible cases and that inflexible adherence to the rules would be detrimental to the public good and that the legislature is not always in session to render a judgment 2. The relationship between the executive and the legislature depends on the specific constitution.
If, however, the chief executive has a veto, the result would be a stalemate between them. Locke describes a similar stalemate in the case where the chief executive has the power to call parliament and can thus prevent it from meeting by refusing to call it into session. Locke assumes that people, when they leave the state of nature, create a government with some sort of constitution that specifies which entities are entitled to exercise which powers.
Locke also assumes that these powers will be used to protect the rights of the people and to promote the public good.
In cases where there is a dispute between the people and the government about whether the government is fulfilling its obligations, there is no higher human authority to which one can appeal. The only appeal left, for Locke, is the appeal to God. His central claims are that government should not use force to try to bring people to the true religion and that religious societies are voluntary organizations that have no right to use coercive power over their own members or those outside their group.
One recurring line of argument that Locke uses is explicitly religious. Locke argues that neither the example of Jesus nor the teaching of the New Testament gives any indication that force is a proper way to bring people to salvation. He also frequently points out what he takes to be clear evidence of hypocrisy, namely that those who are so quick to persecute others for small differences in worship or doctrine are relatively unconcerned with much more obvious moral sins that pose an even greater threat to their eternal state.
In addition to these and similar religious arguments, Locke gives three reasons that are more philosophical in nature for barring governments from using force to encourage people to adopt religious beliefs Works — This argument resonates with the structure of argument used so often in the Two Treatises to establish the natural freedom and equality of mankind. There is no command in the Bible telling magistrates to bring people to the true faith, and people could not consent to such a goal for government because it is not possible for people, at will, to believe what the magistrate tells them to believe.
Their beliefs are a function of what they think is true, not what they will. Many of the magistrates of the world believe religions that are false. If force is indirectly useful in bringing people to the true faith, then Locke has not provided a persuasive argument. Waldron pointed out that this argument blocks only one particular reason for persecution, not all reasons. Thus it would not stop someone who used religious persecution for some end other than religious conversion, such as preserving the peace.
Tuckness b and Tate argue that Locke deemphasized the rationality argument in his later writings. Susan Mendus , for example, notes that successful brainwashing might cause a person to sincerely utter a set of beliefs, but that those beliefs might still not count as genuine. Beliefs induced by coercion might be similarly problematic.
Paul Bou Habib argues that what Locke is really after is sincere inquiry and that Locke thinks inquiry undertaken only because of duress is necessarily insincere.
A person who has good reason to think he will not change his beliefs even when persecuted has good reason to prevent the persecution scenario from ever happening. Richard Vernon argues that we want not only to hold right beliefs, but also to hold them for the right reasons.
Since the balance of reasons rather than the balance of force should determine our beliefs, we would not consent to a system in which irrelevant reasons for belief might influence us.
Richard Tate argues that the strongest argument of Locke for toleration is rooted in the fact that we do not consent to giving government authority in this area, only the promotion of our secular interests, interests that Locke thought a policy of toleration would further. Still other commentators focus on the third argument, that the magistrate might be wrong. The two most promising lines of argument are the following. Wootton argues that there are very good reasons, from the standpoint of a given individual, for thinking that governments will be wrong about which religion is true.
Governments are motivated by the quest for power, not truth, and are unlikely to be good guides in religious matters. Wootton thus takes Locke to be showing that it is irrational, from the perspective of the individual, to consent to government promotion of religion. A different interpretation of the third argument is presented by Tuckness. Political Science » American Government. Philosophy » Political Theory. Philosophy » John Locke. Monthly Newsletter Signup The newsletter highlights recent selections from the journal and useful tips from our blog.
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