Today

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Today

• Problem with the state of nature and solution
• Necessary condition for legitimate government and
  illegitimacy of all absolutism
• Slavery
• Property

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Monday, October 20

• Exam

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Problem with the state of nature

• Locke thinks that while people may have
  reasonably good intentions, they will almost
  inevitably screw up the enforcement of the law of
  nature to some extent.
• Self-love will make people partial to themselves
  and their friends when they are judging the
  natural law in their own case.

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Problem with the state of nature

• Locke thinks that while people may have
  reasonably good intentions, they will almost
  inevitably screw up the enforcement of the law of
  nature to some extent.
• Ill nature, passion, and revenge will carry
  people too far in punishing others.

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Solution to problem

• Civil government, which will prevent people from
  having to judge their own case (neutral third
  part referees).
• The purpose of civil government to prevent the
  ills of a persons judging his own case.

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• Reason to leave the state of nature and enter
  into political unit
• To create a situation in which there are neutral
  third party judges to enforce the law of nature.
• Essential element of legitimate political unit
• Neutral third party judges to enforce the law of
  nature.

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• Absolute monarchs are but men and if
  government is to be the remedy of those evils,
  which necessarily follow from mens being judges
  in their own cases, and the state of nature is
  therefore not to be endured, I desire to know

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• what kind of government that is, and how much
  better it is than the state of nature where one
  man, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to
  be judge in his own case, and may do to all his
  subjects whatever he pleases, without the least
  liberty to any one to question or control those
  who execute his pleasure? and in whatsoever he
  doth, whether led by reason, mistake or passion,
  must be submitted to?

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• Much better it is in the state of nature,
  wherein men are not bound to submit to the unjust
  will of another and if he that judges, judges
  amiss in his own way, or any other case, he is
  answerable for it to the rest of mankind.

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What is (legitimate) civil government?

• Having a standing rule to live by which is common
  to everyone in society.
• Being able to follow my own will in all things
  about which that rule is silent.
• Not being subject to the inconstant, uncertain,
  unknown, arbitrary will of another man.

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Slavery

• Slavery is the absolute power of one person over
  another.
• Slavery is always unjust.
• All absolutist relationships are instances of
  slavery.

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• Property

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• According to Hobbes, what property rights were
  there in the state of nature?
• No mine and thine you have a right to whatever
  you can physically possess, and nothing more.

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• According to Locke, what property rights were
  there in the state of nature?
• Quite a lot!

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Locke on property

• Everything in the earth starts out being common
  to all humans.
• Everything is no longer in common private
  property exists.
• How did humans (legitimately) carve the world up
  into pieces of private property?

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Locke on property

• No man has a right to the body of anyone else.
• Therefore, every man has property rights to his
  own body.

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Locke on property

• Every man has property rights to his own body.
• Therefore, everyone has property rights to the
  labor of his own body.

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Locke on property

• Everyone has property rights to the labor of his
  own body.
• Therefore, everyone has property rights to
  whatever he has mixed his labor with.

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Locke on property

• Everyone has property rights to whatever he has
  mixed his labor with.
• Therefore, whatever I have mixed my labor with
  belongs to me and no one else.

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Locke on property

• Labor puts a distinction between what is common
  to all humans and what is private property.
• By mixing my labor with something I fix my
  property in it I appropriate it.
• This can and does happen in the state of nature.
• People naturally recognize this right.

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Locke on property

• Objection
• The rest of humankind has not given consent for
  me to make something my property.

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Locke on property

• Lockes answer
• If the consent of all were needed, humankind
  would have starved (which was not the intention
  of the creator).

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Locke on property

• Objection
• A person will make too much his own property.

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Locke on property

• Lockes answer
• There is a bound to property rights two
  conditions on what one can take as ones
  property.
• First condition one may take only as much as he
  can make use of to any advantage before it spoils.

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Locke on property

• Lockes answer
• There is a bound to property rights two
  conditions on what one can take as ones
  property.
• Second condition one must leave as much and as
  good for others.

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Locke on property

• Labor improves the land, making it more useful to
  more people.
• Lockes views on property grounded in his Law of
  Nature.
• Lockes views on property grounded in theology.

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Locke on property

• Originally, the bounds of property made for very
  little property and very little inequality.
• But then

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• The invention of money made it possible to
  legitimately acquire much more property than had
  previously been allowed.
• Money made the limits on property acquisition
  less restrictive.

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• Money gave people motivation to improve the land
  even more.
• Now there was reason to cultivate vast areas
  instead of simply what one person could use.
• Great improvements in human life are due to
  property rights and the invention of money.
• All of this happened in the state of nature.

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• But money led to problems as well.
• The introduction of money created economic
  inequality.
• Economic inequality created more quarrels in the
  state of nature than before.
• As more quarrels developed, the state of nature
  became less convenient, and the attraction of a
  civil government became greater.

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• A great attractive of civil government
• The protection of property (and money).
• What are the implications for what civil
  government may do vis-à-vis your property (and
  money)?