Political Philosophy
John Locke
Basic views and deeply shocking views. In the case of Locke, many of the contemporary debates are still discussed via referens to Locke. Territorial rights and climate change are such topics. These topics are really discussed by using the same Lockean arguments. What gives the government of Belgian a right to rule here and not in France? And what does the Belgian government rule over? Does Belgium simply govern the land or does it own the land?
Locke himself doesn’t really talk about this, but he talks about individual property rights.
It is interesting to think of the rights of a country over the land. It probably just means that the state can command me to do certain things; but does it command resources? Not really. It can only punish me for doing something with the oil. The state so on seems to have legitimate rule over individuals whom can do things with those resources. There is no lower limit to the states authority, but there seems to be an upper limit in terms of where we can extract. As such, the authority of the state is like a 3D box. Gernerally as a country we can dig as deep as we like, but not as an individual.
Hobbes wants to defend the royal position, and had to flee in order to write Leviathan. Cromwell was dangerous to him. Fast forward a bit. And John Locke is writing in the 1680s, after the exclusion crisis in 1679-81. Cromwell’s commonwealth was temporary and the rights of the king was restored. Hobbes argued for and wanted to restore the monarchy and this is restored in 1660. The exclusion crisis is about who will come after Charles II. His heir James II was a catholic so many people feared he would govern wrongly. Some factions wanted to exclude him from legitimacy. At this time two factions were formed, the tories and the whigs. Locke sided with the whigs. Locke associates himself with Shaftesbury. This was a dangerous position to take. So Locke had to flee. He fled to Holland where it was okay to be protestant. The work was published in the end of the 1680s. What Locke was doing is to start a revolution. He wrote a book in which he wanted to justify the revolution that was coming, the glorious revolution, which dethrones James II. And so Mary II and William of Orange would take over. So we see here an engaged political philosophy.
The two treatises of government are released sort of post-factum, but was written as a call to arms. Locke thinks there is a right to revolution in certain circumstances. The government has to do things, and if it doesn’t, we can fire the king. That’s the essential difference between him and Hobbes. Hobbes stands for political absolutism, Locke says that the right of the king to rule is subject to certain conditions, like respecting the laws of nature.
Locke in philosophy is also famous for his essay concerning human understanding which is an alternative to the rationalism of Descartes. It is of empiricism. It is about science and knowledge and he says we start out as a tabula rasa which we fill through empirical input. It was also really popular around the time of the French revolution, including his views on language. He starts with the idea that a word is a bundle of ideas, and what we need to do to make sure there is no misunderstanding is to make sure which idea belongs to which word, so we need to very clearly delineate what we speak of. We need to break down which simple ideas we put under the complex idea of apple. Hobbes and Locke do not differ very much in this respect.
He is also known about the letter concerning toleration. It is quite radical for the time, but when we read this we see obvious limitations. He argues for the seperation between state and church. There needs to be a certain limited government, he also argues that we shouldn’t coerce people into belief because this means that they don’t really believe. He tolerates a lot of different religious groups in this work, but it is also striking that atheists and catholics are not included. The catholic cannot be tolerated because they have another prince, the pope. The pope could tell his subjects to take up arms against the king of england. Catholics would be fine if they were civil and didn’t allow their pope to meddle with state affairs. He had some quarrels with atheists in that they cannot be trusted, they cannot keep their promises if they don’t believe in God.
The two later works we will not really consider. The two treatises of government is what we focus on.
Most contemporary theorists do not fully engage with the first part of the treatise, the argument with Filmer. He is like a religious Hobbes, he endorses the divine rights of kings. God has given the world to Adam, and if the king is a descendent of Adam he can be king. The divine right of rulers. Crucially, the king in some way needs to make his claim in the proper lineage and make it credible.
Many contemporary theorists correctly read Locke as the first liberal. He is like the first one that raises many of the premises that we associate with liberalism. It unites much of the liberal sentiment that we have today:
Against political absolutism, governments need to be limited because he also defends natural rights. If the king wakes up today and feels like taking my possessions that’s not right, there needs to be religious tolerance. He wants the measure of executive power to have accountability. James II rules in a way which many whigs thought arbitrary, ie. by royal decree. The king shouldn’t be able to do something because of a personal tendency. Rather it should be law which ruled, not the individual rulers. And lastly, and most importantly, he really defends property rights. Locke thinks that God gave the world to human beings collectively. The world is given to mankind in common. Not just one man. Filmer says the world was given to one man, ie. Adam.
It is also important that for him liberalism is a fundamentally religious doctrine. He grounds all of it in a view of God.
Natural rights are foundations for Locke. Individuals have rights says Locke, and these rights can be invoked against each other and against the state. So a revolution is justified and morally necessary once the king oversteps his legitimate bounds of sovereignty. The king must follow natural rights. Hobbes will say I have the right to kick and scream, whilst Locke will say that the king has to be stopped. In this case, the king should no longer be king. And people possess this natural right on the basis of their humanity. They don’t possess it on the basis of citizenship, but from human. You cannot kill a foreigner either. It is human beings that have natural rights, they are grounded in natural law and this is grounded in what is good and bad. There is a natural law that governs human beings and this is embedded in christianity. It is the christian god which is responsible for natural law. This is the kind of thing which rules in the state of nature. State of nature here too is of course anarchism, and state of society is that of civilised society. And the crucial thing is why we should exit the state of nature. It is important that you understand that already in the state of nature there is actual law. When I am in the state of nature for Locke, then we do know that I have rights, individual natural rights that come from God. I cannot just do things to anyone as I like. I very much know that I am limited by the rights that everyone has. I have a liberty to do what I like limited by the rights of another. I am limited in the scope of others also having rights.
When we speak of liberalism we often speak of three premsies. A liberal theory works with the idea that liberty is the basis, and state power must be justified. Secondly a liberal state also starts with moral individualism, ie. that individual human beings are worth protecting. Lastly it is the idea that we try to seperate the church from the state, ie. state from comprehensive doctrines. Religious neutrality. There should not be one comprehensive doctrine of the right thing to do which decides on the theme of the state. Conceptions of the good life has to be neutral.
His real contribution is in the second treatise however. In the first he only tries to reject Filmer. And then he gets to his own views. Filmer wrote Patriarcha. Filmer also argues like Hobbes does for political absolutism. Filmer argues that we should have absolute monarchy. God gave Adam authority over his family and the earth. Therefore it is impossible to accuse the monarch of violating the rights of individuals. All the rights of individuals are granted by the monarch, we cannot challenge a ruler in any way, it is not subject to something. Locke tries to respond to this reasoning in the first treatise. Essential for Locke is that what Filmer argues for is obediance without the right of challenge from the divine right of the monarch. Hobbes will say that if I will ever obey a government, it should not be grounded divinely, but in consent of individuals, all of us will have to consent. Consent replaces divine right for Hobbes.
Locke’s response is quite biblical. In the bible it says all the children of Adam has equal slices of the earth. He interprets the bible along with Filmer. He argues that the bible nowhere says that Adam and his heirs are the rulers of the world. Locke has a different view. He argues in the first treatise that God gave the world to humanity in common. He also wants to think more about the distinction between political power and patriarchal power. Locke argues that political power is distant from the power of the father over the family. We should distinguish these two. We shouldn’t think of the state as a little family in which there is one man who rules, and also one who rules the family.
Locke argues there are two parents, and not one parent who both rule, so it’s already wrong. Even to parents, your obediance stops when the child gains reason. At some point the child can care for himself. At that point you are no longer supposed to obey your parent. This shows that the right of parents over children is not natural in the way that divine rights assumes.
In the second treatise Locke argues for what the state of nature is and how to get out of it. Having a king that can arbitrarily decide on things is not going to help us get away from anarchy. Locke doesn’t buy the argument of Hobbes and Filmer as a method of getting out of the state of nature. Why is it that contractualism? Because we imagine the state to be an invention. We imagine the state of anarchy and we are going to move to this thing we socially invent, which wouldn’t be there otherwise, but then it’ll need to do certain things for us. Only if stage 2 is better than stage 1 are we going to wish to move it. This is why it’s liberal contractualism. We imagine the state to be an invention that improves certain things that would otherwise rule in the state of nature. Things we would not have otherwise. If we want this thing which will constrain us, we need many reasons to want that. There are 2 normative philosophical arguments that Filmer can use to his advantage. ’Well locke if ur really going to challenge me, how are you ever going to endorse the idea of private property?’, and ’how can consent ever be linked to a political society?’
Filmer himself says he doesn’t need to explain these things as long as he is right. Filmer also endorses private property, but it is only held by the king. If divine right is replaced by consent, is society really ruled by consent? Not everyone consents to society? Every individual who doesn’t consent would still be in the state of nature, they would all be able to escape state power. If a minority is persecuted they could simply not consent. But this is not the case.
In the state of nature, as we have already seen, there is a right and a wrong thing to do, because there is natural law. God created men as equals, and we must treat ourselves and each other as the property of God. Locke argues that men are here for a certain purpose. This implies that we have duties to our God. God’s will prevails. We have a duty to self-preservation, my own life is one that I owe to God. I cannot do to it as I like. There cannot be a moral right to suicide. It would be destroying the property of God. If I have a discussion with someone in the state of nature, I must respect their rights too. I cannot just randomly kill in the state of nature. I have a duty to not harm you, because there are things I cannot do to someone, negative rights. There is then also a positive duty to help other people. I also have a duty to protect other people, unless it conflicts with my own self-preservation. The big problem, which is one reason for exiting, is that natural law is kind of hard for individuals to comprehend. The bible doesn’t give me an explanation for every quarrel in the state of nature. And so we need to use our reason, we need to understand what natural law does. In his empiricist theory there are no innate ideas. But in this work Locke is really a rationalist because he wants us to deduce natural law. We have to reason our way to nature. Natural law is then what we understand that God would have wanted to happen in earth. We have to think of a situation in which I am in a conflict, and I must imagine what natural law would say of this situation. And human beings are bound to obey this law of nature. This means that the law of nature is independent from positive laws of the state. The laws of Belgium and France could be wrong in theory, if they are not in accordance with the state of nature.
”The end of civil society, being to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of nature, which necessarily follow from every man’s being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority, to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the society ought to obey”.
I am free to do as long as I don’t violate the natural rights of others, and the state is basically a referee that determines whose right has been violated. The view of the state of nature that Locke endorses is less terrible than that of Hobbes.
The inconveniences he does talk about is uncertain social atmosphere, and unpredictable aggression. Imagine that I own a piece of land in the state of nature. For Locke there is legitimate way of holding property in the state of nature. And at some point I get into a quarrel with my neighbour. Locke says that in the state of nature, we know one of us is right. God’s law rules. So we can try and both come to an understanding of what Jesus would have wanted. You could just ask what natural law says on this issue. But this is very hard because of partiality. I am always going to be inclined to interpret it in my favour. Both parties believe that they are right. And it is always a problem that it is not very clear what the law of nature says. Perhaps I know that randomly killing someone else is outlawed by God. But where does my property begin and end? Imagine that one is really right and one really wrong, then one needs to be punished. But people are going to violate the laws of nature sometime. Punishments need to be exacted. But it is not clear what the right punishment is. So there are 3 huge problems. 1. The laws are unclear. 2. Partiality. 3. Unclear what punishments should be given. All of these things must happen in the state of nature and there must be solutions. So we need the state to have an answer to all of these three problems.
So there is no divine right of the king. But I will endorse my obediance to him only if it is the result of my consent. Locke blurrily makes a distinction between tacit and express consent. Express consent is when I sign a document in some manner. But really not everyone has done that. So there is also tacit consent. And tacit consent is not vocally agreeing to something but not doing anything against the political authority either. Locke wants to argue that we can get out of consent but it seems like he hasn’t fully explained how tacit consent actually works. Secondary literature is commonly about how to interpret tacit consent.
Hannah Pittkin argues that consent after all is not that important. Perhaps we can do away with consent. What do we need to do once we are in the state? We need to respect the laws of nature. We are not supposed to be completely free after all, I am limited by my others.
We may all believe that since a person doesn’t have the right to violate human rights, whether they have consent or not doesn’t really matter. We should just follow a government that follows natural law.
Simmons argues that we should literally follow Locke and that whoever expressly consents is in the state, and whoever doesn’t is out. This would mean many people are still in the state of nature.
Steiner wrote: May Lockean donuts have holes?. Holes would be pockets of group that have not consented. Simmons and Steiner accept this. They think that only those who truly consent are part of the state.
There is also the position of Jeremy Waldron, he says Locke’s theory is undeveloped. But sometimes, under certain conditions, we can collectively withdraw consent. It doesn’t really matter how consent came to be, what matters is when we expressly withdraw our consent. The point of having consent for Locke in the first place is the ability to withdraw. It’s to allow us to fire the sovereign.
”for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself”
Locke allows for legitimate slavery to exist. As an adivser to the governor of Virginia, locke writes that in general something that so far sounds interesting is that in the state of nature, and also in civil society, it is sometimes fine to punish someone with the death penalty. Once somebody gets the death penalty, it is also okay for that person to decide that that person can become a life-long slave. Natural law could be such that we don’t want someone to not be alive, and when this is the case, we can also make them a slave. There is a way to enslave someone morally.
In the instructions to the governor of Virginia, he drafted the idea that African slaves are prisoners of a just war committed by the African Royal Company. Locke tries to make his theory consistent by arguing that there were just wars in Africa and the slaves who were taken from, in just theory, can be commutted into a sentence of life-long slavery. He had also economic interests in that slave trade. He had economic reasons to back what they were doing. Locke could never by his own argument apply this to the slavery of children. He was endorsing an institution here that did enslave children, so they did more than what is justified in his theory. But at the same time he has premises that we can follow to a certain extent.
Locke wants to say that it is logical impossible to appoint an absolutist ruler through consent. It is giving away the power of others, and it is fundamentally against one’s own self-interest.
In the second treatise, there is a chapter on private property. He writes political philosophy, and here he wants to add something different. Why did he chose that topic specifically? Like all the contemporary discussions we have now? Private property can be acquired in the state of nature. Whoever transforms an object by adding labour to it, acquires a property right to that object. By mixing my labour into the object the, the object becomes that of mine.
Nature belongs to human beings in common, this means that you and I are both equally entitled to water from the river for example. Imagine I take a few apples from nature in an empty plot of land and I begin cultivating that land from the apples. At that moment, the apple in the basket has labour from me applied to it. If someone takes this item it is theft because it is stealing the specific power that I put into it. That’s why you cannot take it. An achre of land with tobacco, sugar or barley, is mine, even though everything there is given by God in common, because I operate it and develop it. If the horse belongs to me, and the horse feeds on the grass, then the grass the horse feeds on is mine. The indigenous people of America have property rights that people must respect, but they do not have a political authority that enforces these rights. The deer that an indian kills is the property of that indian. The gold as such is everyone’s, but the goal that I dig up is mine. He emphasises that labour is responsible for most of the property rights that exist.