John Locke

Eric Mack

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781441123220
• eBook ISBN: 9781623568511
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

John Locke (1632-1704), one of the great philosophers, is probably best known for his contributions to political thought. In this outstanding volume, Eric Mack explains Locke's philosophical position, placing it in the tumultuous political and religious context of 17th century England. For Locke, entering into political society did not involve giving up one's natural rights, but rather transferring to governmental authority the job of protecting those rights. In this rigorous critical analysis, Mack argues that Locke provides an impressive - if not decisive - philosophical case for the view that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty and property, despite the existence or actions of any political authority.

Part 1

Intellectual Biography

1

The Historical and Ideological Context of Locke’s Political Philosophy

John Locke is one of the great figures in the history of Western philosophy. He is one of the dozen or so thinkers who are remembered for their influential contributions across a broad spectrum of philosophical sub-fields—in Locke’s case, across epistemology, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, rational theology, ethics, and political philosophy. He was a seminal figure in the rise of the modern intellectual world. Today Locke is primarily remembered as a defender of empiricism in epistemology and of individualist liberalism in political theory. This work aims to present a systematic account of John Locke’s political philosophy. This chapter lays out the main elements of that philosophy and the structure of the account that will follow; it also provides a brief sketch of the historical and ideological context of Locke’s political thinking.

The Aims of This Work

To establish a point of departure and to define the task of this work, I shall start by stating certain fundamental tenets of political philosophy that are commonly and correctly understood to have been advanced by John Locke.

Each individual possesses natural rights of life, liberty, and property; for each individual, these rights define the boundaries of a domain within which that individual may do as he sees fit.

The rights of property, that is, individuals' rights to the fruits of their labor and to what they acquire in exchange for the fruits of their labor, flow from each individual’s right over himself and his labor.

The legitimate function of government is the articulation and protection of the rights of individuals to life, liberty, and property.

Government derives its limited authority from the consent of the governed.

Political rulers who infringe upon or even systematically fail to protect individual rights may rightfully be resisted and replaced.

Political authority does not extend to the saving of men’s souls. Respect for the rights of each individual and the voluntary associations individuals may form requires broad religious toleration.

The pivotal idea is that persons possess natural rights. To assert this is not to say that persons are protected by some strange metaphysical shell. Rather, it is to assert that certain fundamental facts about each person provide reasons for others to be circumspect in their treatment of that person, for example, reasons to avoid treating that person as material which exists for their own use and purposes.¹

The classical liberalism tradition in political thought takes the primary, if not sole, political norm to be a prohibition on infringements upon individual liberty. Liberty encompasses both the “personal” liberty of, for example, choosing what religion one will practice and the “economic” liberty of, for example, choosing which crop one will plant in one’s fields. The primary, if not sole, role of the government is the protection of individuals' liberty. Thus, at least as a first approximation, governments may employ force or the threat of force for the purpose of defending individuals' liberty and only for this purpose. The radical limitation on the role of government is a boon rather than a hindrance to mutually beneficial social order. For, within a framework of protected individual liberty, persons voluntarily create and participate in a rich variety of mutually advantageous economic and social relationships. If my reading of Locke is correct, he stands as the historically most salient expositor of a rights-oriented classical liberalism because his case for liberty and its protection by a narrowly circumscribed government and for resistance against tyrannical government is propelled by his contentions about rights.

My working hypothesis in this work is that Locke provides an impressive, if not decisive, philosophical case for the key tenets cited above—except, for his doctrine of consent. I will document Locke’s subscription to these core tenets, identify the key philosophical arguments that Locke offers for them, and display the persuasive force of Locke’s arguments.

Fortunately, space does not permit me to enter expressly into the many deep scholarly controversies about how to interpret Locke’s writings in political philosophy. While I do not think that everything Locke says relevant to political philosophy can be fit into the representation of Locke’s position that I develop, I believe that more of what Locke says—especially more of what is really central to Locke’s distinctive vision—cannot be fit into alternative interpretations of Locke.

Locke’s best known work in political philosophy—the very core of Lockean political philosophy—is the Second Treatise of Government, which is Book II of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government.² The Second Treatise takes us through the following key topics: the state of nature in which men are naturally equal and free; the law of nature which governs men in the state of nature; property rights; the introduction of money and the development of commercial society; the inconveniences of the state of nature and the need for and purpose of government; the origin of legitimate government in the consent of the governed; and the legitimacy of resistance to government which acts contrary to or fails to serve its specific purpose. The four chapters that follow this introduction track the logical arrangement of topics that Locke provides for us in the Second Treatise. The second chapter of this work deals with Locke’s understanding of the state of nature and the law of nature that governs that state. The third chapter provides an account of Locke’s doctrine of property rights, certain restrictions that apply to those rights, the invention of money, and the rise of commercial society. The fourth chapter concerns the inconveniences that beset the state of nature, the purpose of political authority, and the manner in which consent is supposed to give rise to political society and government. The fifth chapter deals largely with the grounds for resistance when those with political power either violate or fail to carry out their authorized purpose. The sixth chapter of this work examines Locke’s important arguments in defense of religious toleration. These arguments are primarily advanced in the second most read of Locke’s works within political philosophy—his A Letter Concerning Toleration (1983). As we shall see, the arguments of the Second Treatise and of the Letter are intricately intertwined and mutually supportive. All of the five central chapters will draw upon additional material from Locke’s body of political writings. Chapter 7 discusses the reception of Locke’s political thought in the several generations after his death and then returns to central themes in Locke’s political theory which are of current philosophical relevance.

A Century of Ideological and Political Conflict

To set the stage for Locke’s political philosophy and for brief accounts of the views of his two main authoritarian opponents, Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes, we need a quick background sketch of the politically turbulent century in which these men lived and wrote. James I, son of Mary Queen of Scots and previously James VI of Scotland, ascended to the English throne in 1603. At least from the time of James' ascension through the Glorious Revolution of 1688, England was riven by a set of interconnected conflicts concerning the proper extent and location of religious and political authority.³

At the center of the religious dimension of this conflict was the Anglican Church with its rigid hierarchy and its high church tone; the Church of England was, of course, officially presided over by the king and its hierarchy was closely allied to the English monarch. From the right (so to speak) the Anglican Church was threatened by plots to bring England back to Catholicism by force of arms and by the peaceful succession to the throne of either a Catholic sympathizer or convert. From the left (so to speak) the established Anglican Church was under attack from Puritanism with its demands for a less ritualized, less Popish, more Scripturally oriented, and locally governed churches and, from further yet on the left, more radically dissenting Protestant groups. Numerous writers argued that social and political peace required that some specific brand of Christianity be enforced throughout the land. On the other hand, at least from the 1640s and onward, many other authors defended a regime of religious toleration. There was conflict over which religion should be imposed and also conflict over whether any (specific) religion should be imposed. Along the dimension of political authority, the seventeenth-century dispute was similarly twofold. First, which political body, the monarch or the parliament ought to rule? Or, if not one or the other alone, what should be the division of political authority between the monarch and the parliament? Second, wherever political authority should be lodged, how extensive should that authority be? Is political authority, wherever it is best placed, unlimited—so that, for example, it may be used to require everyone to practice the one established religion? Or is political authority, wherever it is best placed, itself subject to lawful constraints?

So, in religion, we have pro-Catholic factions, pro-Anglican factions, pro-Puritan factions, pro-dissenter factions and cutting across these divisions anti-tolerance and pro-tolerance factions. In politics, we have pro-monarchial factions and pro-parliamentary factions and cutting across these divisions advocates of unlimited authority and advocates of constrained authority. Add in all the more parochial and less ideological bases for the loyalties and animosities which people form and one has a recipe for endlessly shifting alliances and endlessly changing points of conflict. Nevertheless, alliances of sufficient duration formed in the 1640s for the English to fight a civil war that ended in the execution of Charles I in 1649 and to conduct a revolution in 1688 which ousted James II and brought the invading William of Orange to the throne (along with his wife, Mary).

Although James I was an explicit advocate of absolute monarchical authority, he was a much more subtle politician than his son, Charles, who succeeded him in 1625. Charles I was almost continually embroiled in conflicts with his subjects over religion, taxation, and the prerogatives of Parliament. Civil war broke out in 1642 between opponents and supporters of the monarchical political and ecclesiastical authority. All efforts at comprise between the stubborn and pompous Charles and the increasing radical anti-monarchical coalition failed. Finally the captured (and recaptured) Charles was tried and convicted of treason in January 1649. The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished. Oliver Cromwell, who had risen to be the dominant military leader in the struggle against Charles I, ruled as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth from 1653 until his death in 1658. A new Parliament—including a revivified House of Lords—met in 1660 and invited Charles I’s son to return as king. From the time of Charles II’s return in 1661, the same complex of conflicts that seemingly had culminated in the Charles I’s execution began to be replayed. Correctly or not, Charles II’s willingness to extend toleration to Catholics was seen as part of a move to reestablish a highly authoritarian political and religious order. By the mid-1670s two political coalitions had formed—a Whig coalition favoring limits on monarchial power and at least some degree of toleration for dissenting religious persuasions and a Tory coalition favoring discretionary monarchical power and the domination of religious life by the Church of England (or perhaps even the Church of Rome).

The chief leader of the Whig camp was the Earl of Shaftsbury; and the chief cause of the Whigs by the late 1670s was the passage of an Exclusion Act that would preclude any Catholic from becoming the English monarch. Charles II was (rightly) suspected of having Catholic inclinations and intentions and, more worrisome yet, his heir—Charles' younger brother James—had converted to Catholicism in 1673. Exclusion Bills were passed in the House of Commons in 1679 and 1680, but neither were approved by the House of Lords. In 1681 Charles dissolved Parliament before the Commons could once again move for Exclusion. Shaftsbury was charged with treason; but the charge was invalidated by a sympathetic London grand jury. Shaftsbury attempted unsuccessfully to rally his supporters to insurrection against Charles. When that effort failed, he fled to Holland in November 1682, where he died in January 1683. Later in 1683 radical remnants of Shaftsbury’s Whig followers were arrested, tried, and executed for their participation in the Rye House plot to assassinate Charles and James. Charles II died in1685 and was succeeded by the Catholic James. The birth of a son to James II in June of 1688 who would be raised as a Catholic heir to the throne forged an alliance of Whig and Tory noblemen to urge William of Orange (whose wife, Mary, was James II’ Protestant daughter) to rescue England from popery and arbitrary power. William landed with his army in November of 1688, much of the country rallied to William, and James fled to France. The Bill of Rights that followed placed limits upon monarchial power and reasserted what were taken to be the traditional rights of Parliament and of individuals. A moderate degree of religious toleration—less than hoped for by the main advocates of toleration—was enacted.

It was into this era of conflict that John Locke was born in Somerset county in southwest England in 1632. His father, John Locke, was a not very successful lawyer who served as clerk for the Justices of the Peace in Somerset and also as the personal attorney for one of the Justices, Alexander Popham. Early in the civil war, Popham organized and lead a troop of Parliamentary soldiers; and John Locke, the father, served as a captain in that troop. Through the good offices of Popham, John Locke, the son, was admitted to the prestigious Westminster School in 1647. Locke moved on to Christ Church at Oxford in 1652. Locke was dissatisfied with the education offered at Oxford, which was still classical in content and scholastic in form. He increasingly associated himself with a circle of experimental scientists in Oxford, the most prominent of whom was Robert Boyle. Locke turned especially to the empirical study of medicine. Locke’s decision not to seek ordination made him ineligible for most of the senior studentships at Christ Church. However, in 1675—after he had substantially moved on to non-academic pastures—Locke was appointed to one of the two studentships in medicine. During the late 1650s and early 1660s Locke shared the fatigue that the nation as a whole felt from many years of political disorder and uncertainty. In 1660–1661 Locke composed, but did not publish, two essays—now known as the “Two Tracts on Government” (Locke 1997, pp.3–78)— which expressed strongly authoritarian views with respect to the sovereign’s authority over religious matters. He disdained the enthusiasm of deviant Protestant sects and he welcomed the Restoration of the Stuarts. In 1663–1664, he delivered a series of lectures at his college—now known as the Essays on the Law of Nature (1997, pp. 79–133)—in which Locke first defends his epistemological claims that all of human knowledge ultimate derives from sense experience, and no knowledge comes in the form of "innate ideas."

The pivotal moment in Locke’s life was his meeting the Earl of Shaftsbury—at that point, still Lord Ashley—in Oxford in 1666. Within a year Locke joined the Whig leader’s household in London as his personal physician and as an important member of Shaftsbury’s brain trust. Locke’s entrance into Shaftsbury’s circle was accompanied by a very marked transformation of Locke’s political views. For in 1667 he composed, but did not publish, what is now known as “An Essay on Toleration” (1997, pp.134–59) which foreshadowed both his later defenses of religious toleration and his later liberal account of the purpose of government. In 1668 Locke solidified his relationship with Shaftsbury by supervising a lifesaving operation which inserted a duct to drain an abscess in Shaftsbury liver.

In London, Locke continued his pursuit of experimental science and empirical medical studies. Conversations with friends on religious and moral topics convinced him that the first intellectual necessity was an account of the nature and limits of human knowledge. In 1671 he composed the first draft of what was to become the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In the later 1670s, Locke lived in France meeting with French scientists and anti-Cartesian philosophers and, perhaps, gathering intelligence for Shaftsbury about negotiations between the King of France and Charles II. Locke returned to London in 1679 and rejoined Shaftsbury who had been released from a year’s imprisonment in the Tower of London. Over the next couple of years, the fight over an Exclusion Bill raged. During the Exclusion crisis supporters of monarchical authority resurrected the writings of Robert Filmer. Locke almost certainly wrote the basic text of the Two Treatises of Government, the first book of which is entirely devoted to an attack on Filmer’s patriarchalism, during the Exclusion crisis or the succeeding year or so when Shaftsbury and his allies were attempting to organize an insurrection against Charles. After Shaftsbury fled to Holland, radical Whig attempts to unseat Charles and block the ascendance of James continued, largely in the form of the abortive Rye House plot. Within a couple of days of that plot being betrayed—and before its betrayal was publicly known—Locke left London to settle his affairs in Oxford and Somerset; and then he too fled to Holland. There is good evidence, albeit no one smoking musket, that while he remained in England Locke was deeply involved in the conspiracies against Charles and that, while he was in Holland, he was deeply involved in attempts to launch further insurrections against Charles and then James.⁴ This was certainly the view of Charles II when he ordered the obedient officials of Christ Church to strip Locke of his studentship in late 1684.

While he hid out in Holland, Locke continued to work on his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (ECHU); it was published in December of 1689. Locke also composed his Epistola de Tolerantia which was published...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half Title
• Series Introduction
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor's Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part 1: Intellectual Biography
• Part 2: Critical Exposition
• Part 3: Reception and Contemporary Relevance
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index