John Locke

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John Locke

• Two Treatises on Government (1690)

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Lockes times

• Locke (1632-1704)
• 1658 Cromwells death
• 1660 Restoration of Charles II (son of Charles
  I). Governed between 1660-1685, renewed problems
  of religion and parliament vs. the Crown
• Succeeded by his brother James II, a catholic
• THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION
• 1688 Whig and Tory leaders invite Prince William
  of Orange to become the British monarch for
  mandate of the Parliament/ James II leaves the
  country.
• 1689 Convention Parliament accuses James II of
  having subverted the original contract and
  designates William and Mary as King and Queen
  through the Bill of Rights (deprived the king
  of fiscal and military power, banned Catholicism)
• 1st Constitutional Monarchy

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Locke

• Puritan family
• Oxford 1652-1684 (fired for political reasons)
• Interested in philosophy, science, medicine.
• Close friendship with Lord Ashley (Whig
  liberal). After him, Locke became a governments
  high official until 1675).
• Fled to Holland in 1679 and returned only ten
  years later (Holland exemplified the possibility
  for toleration)
• 1696 Commissioner of Trade and Plantations
• Two Treatises (1679-1681, revised in 1689)
• Foundational work for Liberalism
• The political begins to be modeled upon civil and
  commercial law, by which the relations involved
  in trade and the firm serve us to understand
  power (compare with Aristotle)

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Lockes State of Nature

• Life in the state of nature is not substantially
  different from life in the civil society
• Equality
• Governed by reason
• Life is lived within the bounds of the law of
  nature (389) (? there is liberty but not
  licence)
• -Man has no liberty to destroy himself, or so
  much as any creature in his possession (389)
• - Preservation comes not in competition (390)
• -Natural rights of punishing crimes and obtaining
  reparation (391)
• - Force without right upon a mans person makes
  a state of war where there is, and is not, a
  common judge (393). To avoid these situations of
  war, men create society

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Defective laws of nature (399)

• Lack of precision and clarity
• There is no third-party
• Weak parties cannot enforce the laws (of nature)
• Ex passage from possession to property

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Property

• God, who hath given the world to men in common,
  hath also given them reason to make use of it to
  the best advantage of life and convenience
  (394).
• The preservation of property amounts to the main
  function of government
• Life, Liberty and Estate (397)
• The great and chief end of mens uniting into
  commonwealths, and putting themselves under
  government, is the preservation of their
  property (399)
• Locke argues that labor creates property (Thus
  labour, in the beginning, gave a right of
  property (396)
• Origin of theories of value further developed by
  Smith/Ricardo/Marx

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Social Contract ? Law Order

• The social contract sets up society
• Predictability of known laws and impartial
  institutions (E E 384)
• The social contract perfects natural laws
• (law enforcers, umpire)
• Government does not arise from the contract, but
  from a fiduciary trust

The power of the government remains limited by
eternal natural laws (400)
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• Law precedes the state in Locke, but follows it
  in Hobbes. (385)

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• Hobbes states coexist in a state of nature

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Against Absolutism

• It is evident that absolute monarchy, which by
  some men is counted for the only government in
  the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil
  society, and so can be no form of civil
  government at all. (398)

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The Right to Rebel

• The reason why men enter into society is the
  preservation of their property whenever the
  legislators endeavour to take away and destroy
  the property of the people, or to reduce them to
  slavery under arbitrary power, they put
  themselves into a state of war with the people,
  who are thereupon absolved from any farther
  obedience, and are left to the common refuge
  which God provided for all men against force and
  violence (403).