John Locke
In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute the
doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been
put forward by Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, and to establish a theory which
would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order. The criticism
of Filmer in the first Treatise is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty
of Adam, and so of kings as Adam's heirs, has lost all interest; and Locke's
argument has been only too effective: his exhaustive reply to so absurd a
thesis becomes itself wearisome. Although there is little direct reference
to Hobbes, Locke seems to have had Hobbes in mind when he argued that the
doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state
of nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines which are elaborated
in the second treatise became the basis of social and political philosophy
for generations. Labor is the origin and justification of property; contract
or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits. Behind both
doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The
state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society,
men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men are born free
and equal in rights. Whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use.
Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which
there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that,
when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond
those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. But the origin of government
is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. The moral
law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all
men equally have the right to punish transgressors: civil society originates
when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this
function to certain officers. Thus government is instituted by a "social
contract"; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations;
moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred
them. Locke's theory is thus no more historical than Hobbes's. It is a rendering
of the facts of constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served
its purpose as a justification of the Revolution settlement in accordance
with the ideas of the time.
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