Authority and Freedom in the Interpretation of Locke's Political Theory (original) (raw)
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Locke and the Nature of Political Authority
The Review of Politics 77, no. 1 (Winter 2015): 1-22.
This paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.
In the state of nature no one person holds authority over another. People however prefer to leave this state because of its inconveniences. They therefore agree unanimously to enter into a civil or political society, and by majority decision delegate their united powers to particular officials, who henceforward have the right to be obeyed by every citizen. How are we to absorb this story? Recent interpretation tends to accept it, not as a description of presumed historical fact, but as a theoretical justification of limited government on the basis of abstract principles within the framework of a hypothetical contract. The historical element is ornamental and superfluous, or at best polemical and subordinate. This reading is attractive, I suggest, mainly because the principal element in Locke's account which seems to require a historical interpretation, is identified as individual consent, and this seems not to play a major theoretical role, nor of course a particularly convincing one. If it is history, it is bad history; if it is fiction, it may be illuminating. In opposition to this exegetical trend I will argue: 1° that the principal historical element in Locke's account is social convention, not individual consent; 2° that it is of fundamental importance to Locke's concerns; 1 But for the time and the facilities made available at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Wassenaar this article would not have been written. The critical comments of Frans Jacobs were very useful to me.
Locke, Morality, and the Pragmatic Ground of Politics
Philosophia: International Journal of Philosophy
The paper argues that John Locke's 'Theory of government justification' (TGJ) is grounded on a consistent moral account. This is shown by reconstructing such an account through textual analysis of The Essays on the Law of Nature, The Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and the Two Treatises of Government. The first two parts of the paper show that the account of morality that can be traced throughout Locke's works fulfills the desiderata of 1) normative strength and 2) motivational effectiveness by way of being at the same time both deontic and naturalistic. The third part introduces an epistemological objection that seriously compromises the success of Locke's project but argues that it is not fatal to it.
15th Annual SC Upstate Research Symposium, 2019
This paper discusses seventeenth century philosopher John Locke’s life, works, and the inconsistencies within his philosophy. In addition, the ways in which the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and the dawn of the Enlightenment influenced John Locke’s life and philosophy are explored. This paper chiefly examines the discrepancies within John Locke’s Two Tracts on Government, The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, A Letter Concerning Toleration, Two Treatises of Government, and Some Thoughts on Education — paying special attention to Locke’s positions on individual sovereignty, freedom of religion, and the inherited status of man.
John Locke's Political Philosophy: Sacred or Secular?
Political philosopher John Locke stood at the beginning of the classical liberal tradition that has shaped Western discourse throughout modernity, emphasising an unprecedented primacy of the freedom and equality of the autonomous individual, leading to the development of notions such as tolerance, secularism, and human rights. The question central to this paper is to what extent Locke’s political philosophy is predicated on Christian theological commitments, and if a bracketing of this religious background could still result in a purely secular but recognisably Lockean political philosophy. Through a close analysis of several parts of Locke’s bibliography, this paper argues that Locke’s theological commitments are foundational for his political philosophy and that the bracketing of such commitments inevitably leads to unintelligibility of this philosophy. Subsequently, Locke’s thought is placed wider historical context, to see how modern notions such as human rights, equality of humans, and secularism are often deeply rooted in Christian thought.
Morality and politics of a modern self : a critical reconstruction of Lockean liberalism
1997
This thesis attempts to delineate the moral and political thought of John Locke as a philosophical narrative of liberalism. A central issue of the thesis is the idea of the liberal or modern self, but I do not interpret Locke's thought exclusively from this perspective. Rather, do I attempt to describe a moral vision that integrates Locke's ideas as a whole, in which his concept of the self is to be understood. The thesis shows that Locke's moral vision is a serious contribution to the liberal tradition, which gives us an insight into another, non-Kantian liberalism. After explaining the methodological nature of the thesis in the Introduction, I illustrate the development of Locke's early thought in chapters two and three. This reveals some theoretical problems imposed upon the intellectual effort of the mature Locke. The following three chapters deal with Locke's magnum opus. Essay concerning Human Understanding; they show that despite his failure to construct a...
John Locke and the History of Political Ideas: Rights rather than Duties
2023
Nowadays, the idea that man as such has rights is almost evident. It is also clear that these rights must not be infringed by others and above all by those who hold political authority. The contemporary debate concerns rather what these rights consist of or what their content is. Even autocratic regimes pay the kind of homage that vice pays to virtue by making hypocritical statements that they violate in practice. There is even a paradoxical correlation: the more declarations of human rights a regime subscribes to, the more likely it is that serious violations of these rights will occur. It is hard for us to imagine that man as such has not always been considered a subject of rights. The ancients, however, did not recognize the rights of man as a man, but only as a citizen. Medieval and even modern people throughout the Ancien Régime thought that rights depended on the body politic, the stance in office or “the corporation” to which one belonged; we can best describe them as “privileges.” Obviously, there are great difficulties in explaining the basis and even the nature of the actual rights that man has as a man, as it may seem that, in the absence of some basic social institutions or civic framework, their content cannot be specified. This is why some think that without a minimum of social context these human rights are as mythical as witches and unicorns. Even these thinkers, however, do not deny that men are holders of rights; they just uphold that rights presuppose a historical and political framework. How is it possible that, suddenly, man became an obvious subject of rights? To understand this, it is important to note that there was a radical shift in emphasis in seventeenth-century political philosophy. Before, citizens had, both in moral life and in civic life, certain natural duties, but from then onwards man was mostly the undeniable holder of certain rights. Natural duties were those precepts of natural law that had been identified by the medievals. For example, when Thomas Aquinas considers what the precepts of natural law are, he begins by saying that they are found when, through practical reasoning about what is good for us, we realize that it is good to live rather than to die, or develop our capabilities instead of not doing so. There is thus a natural precept about the preservation of life and there are also various precepts concerning what is necessary for our well-being as human beings, such as living in harmony with others in our community. This is different from saying that we have a natural right to live rather than die, or a natural right to seek our own well-being. It is, above all, very different from saying that the justification of political society is that political society safeguards our natural rights instead of merely allowing us – as social creatures by nature – to fulfill our natural duties to others and to God. This difference is inaccurately described by those who qualify modern rights as “subjectivist” or “individualist”, as they are concerned with emphasizing the freedoms and entitlements of the individual against the rival forces of authority, other individuals and, ultimately, man’s natural state. It is one possible way of describing the difference between the moderns and the ancients, but not the most accurate. Not everyone recognizes the novelty of rights. Some find the idea so self-evident that they find it difficult to admit that it is not very ancient, not to say eternal, and retrospectively discover man’s natural rights where we find above all natural duties arising from natural law. Indeed, there are at least three ways of blurring the difference between natural duties arising from natural law and the new modern natural rights. The first consists in confusing a natural right with what is permissible and not punishable in certain circumstances, such as taking what is necessary for subsistence, or resisting aggressive forces. A second way is to judge that certain moral injunctions, such as giving alms or the prohibition against murder, correspond to a natural right, like the right to assistance or to life. A third confusion is to see natural rights in what are natural obligations—for example, as if the duty to obey God before men was a right to rebellion. This shift occurred in the seventeenth century. However, rights and duties are very different and to better understand this difference we need, at the very least, a genealogy of the shift in emphasis from natural duties (which emerge from natural law) towards natural rights (which emerge from man’s natural state). When does this start? Was it already with the medievals, or even earlier, with the Roman jurists? Nothing is more difficult than dating a major change in ideas. Whatever the case, the shift in emphasis from natural duties to natural rights can be said to be consummated when the role of political authority becomes that of securing the natural rights of man. It is obvious that the change took place during this process. Currently, political discourse and even conversation among citizens proceed as if it was evident that human rights must be untouchable, or at least that they “trump” other considerations. We also assume that a political authority that systematically violates human rights is detestable and illegitimate and must be removed. Hobbes is perhaps the originator of this shift in emphasis from duties to rights, but Locke is the first to argue that the new natural rights that man has as such by his nature are not lost in civil life. If we never lose them, this imposes severe limits on the scope of governmental action. Locke is therefore the first theorist in the modern tradition of limited government and the inalienable rights of man.
John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus
The aim of this highly original book is twofold: to explain the reconciliation of religion and politics in the work of John Locke and to explore the relevance of that reconciliation for politics in our own time.
The Quest for Locke's Poltical Theology
Ethics & Politics , 2016
Theological and political concepts and practices are frequently deeply related in political thought. If this statement is true in general, it is particularly accurate for the case of John Locke, to the extent that we can apply the label " political theology " — following Carl Schmitt's approach to the topic—for evaluating his project. Elisabeth A. Pritchard's recent book Religion in Public: Locke's Political Theology centers on that specific " label, " which has sometimes been used, albeit not frequently, by other scholars. Speaking of a Lockean political theology means that liberalism does not represent the official end of every kind of political theology. In Pritchard's understanding, Locke's political theology consists of the shared conviction or consensus that individuals are the sacred property of a transcendent and benevolent creator. As a result, in his view Locke condemns every kind of political theology that compromises with hierarchical and competitive structures, providing differential access to the sacred. In this article I will defend a competing argument: In John Locke's writings we can find a political theology of sovereignty, even though he argued using liberal political presuppositions. In the end he consecrates political power just as the previous political tradition did, even if he uses a different argumentative path for achieving legitimation. He creates the fiction that political intervention, even in sacred matters, can be eliminated from the political arena.