Western Political Thought: John Locke

-) John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, generally regarded as one of the most
persuasive of Enlightenment intellectuals and usually identified as the "Father of Liberalism". It can be
said that liberalism as a political thought initiated with John Locke.Locke exercised a deep influence on
political philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism. Michael Zuckert has contended that Locke
launched liberalism by moderating Hobbesian absolutism and evidently separating the monarchies of
Church and State. He had a strong influence on Voltaire who called him "le sage Locke". His arguments
concerning liberty and the social contract later influenced the written works of Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. But Locke’s influence may
have been even more reflective in the realm of epistemology.Locke redefined subjectivity, or self, and
intellectual historians such as Charles Taylor and Jerrold Seigel argue that Locke’s An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding (1690) marks the commencement of the modern Western conception of the self.

The Moral Role of Government:-

Locke stated that political power is the natural power of each man cooperatively given up into the hands
of a designated body. The setting up of government is much less important, Locke contemplates that this
is original social-political "compact." A community surrenders some degree of its natural rights in favour of
government, which is better able to protect those rights than any man could alone. Because government
exists specially for the welfare of the community, any government that breaks the compact can and
should be substituted. The community has a moral obligation to upheaval against or otherwise replace
any government that forgets that it exists only for the people’s benefit. Locke realized that it was important
to thoroughly examine public institutions and be clear about what functions were legitimate and what
areas of life were inappropriate for those institutions to participate in or exert influence over. He also
believed that determining the proper role of government would allow humans to flourish as individuals and
as societies, both materially and spiritually. Because God gave man the ability to reason, the freedom that
a properly executed government provides for humans amounts to the fulfilment of the divine purpose for
humanity. According to Locke, the moral order of natural law is permanent and self-perpetuating.
Governments are only factors contributing to that moral order.

An Empirical Theory of Knowledge:-

Locke was the first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He assumed that, at birth, the
mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Conflicting to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing
concepts, he sustained that people are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead
determined only by experience derived from sense perception. He argued that humans fill with ideas as
they experience the world through the five senses. Locke described knowledge as the connection and
agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of the ideas humans form. This description clearly indicates
that our knowledge does not extend beyond the scope of human ideas. In fact, it would mean that our
knowledge is even narrower than this description implies, because the connection between most simple
human ideas is unknown. Because ideas are limited by experience, and we cannot possibly experience
everything that exists in the world, our knowledge is further compromised.

State of nature:-

Locke begins by developing the idea of equality of human beings in the state of nature and their natural
rights to life, liberty and the state of property. Following this description of the individual, he develops
notions of the community and the civil society. Locke states that Government is based on the consent of
the people and that legitimate government is limited, constituted by separation of powers. To describe the
origin of political power, Locke elaborated the State of Nature. Locke’s description of State of Nature was
not as miserable and pessimistic as Hobbes’. It is well established that the State of Nature is the stock in
trade of all contract theories of the state. Locke considered that man is a rational and social creature and
as such capable of identifying and living in a moral order. He is not selfish, competitive and aggressive.
The Lockean state of nature, far from being a war of all is a state of ’Peace good will, mutual assistance
and preservation". It signifies a pre-political rather than a pre-social condition. Men do not indulge in
constant warfare in it, for peace and reason overcome in it. The state of nature is governed by a law of
nature. This law "obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but
consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm one another in his life, health,
liberty or possessions for men being all the workmanship of one almighty and infinitely wise maker. All the
servants of sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business; they are his
property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure."

According to Locke’s state of nature, men have equal natural rights to life, liberty and property together
known as Right to Property. These rights are unchallengeable and inviolable for they are derived from the
Law of Nature which is God’s reason. Everyone is bound by reason not only to preserve oneself but to
preserve all mankind in so far as his own preservation does not come in conflict with it. Men are free and
equal and there is no commonly acknowledged superior whose orders they are obliged to obey.
Everybody is the judge of his own actions.

A Natural Foundation of Reason:-

Locke argued that God gave people the capacity for reason to support them in the search for truth. As
God’s creations, we know that we must preserve ourselves. To help us, God created in us a natural
aversion to misery and a desire for happiness, so we avoid things that cause us pain and seek out
pleasure instead. We can reason that since we are all equally God’s children, God must want everyone to
be happy. If one person makes another unhappy by causing him pain, that person has excluded God’s
will. Therefore, each person has a responsibility to preserve other people as well as himself. Recognizing
the responsibility to preserve the rights of all humankind naturally leads to tolerance. This notion forms the
basis for Locke’s belief in the separation of church and state. If we all must come to discover the truth
through reason, then no one man is naturally better able to discover truth than any other man. For this
reason, political leaders do not have the right to impose beliefs on the people. Because everything we
understand comes through experience and is interpreted by reason, no outside force can make us
understand something in conflict with our own ideas. Locke asserted that if men were to follow the
government instinctively, they would be surrendering their own reason and thus violating God’s law, or
natural law.

Natural rights:-

The notion of Natural rights has an important subject in Lockean political philosophy. Locke stated that
men in the state of nature possessed some natural rights like right to life, liberty and property. These
natural rights are derived from natural law and are limited by it. The freedom of man and liberty of acting
according to his will is grounded on having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern
himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will". The end of law is not to
abolish or to restrain but to preserve or enlarge freedom for in all the states of created beings, where
there is no law there is no freedom." Locke described that Right to Property is intimately connected with
right to life and liberty as its necessary consequence. Sometimes Locke concluded all natural rights in the
right to property. Life and liberty are more important than property. Man creates property by mixing his
labour with the objects of nature. In the beginning all, things were held in common. But common
ownership is not sufficient to provide men with means of life and satisfy their needs. Man must mix his
labour with resources provided by nature to enable him to make use of them in a more efficient and
profitable way. Since man owns his own person his body and limbs, the object with which he mixes his
labour becomes his own property by right. This is the foundation of the famous labour theory of value
common to both the classical and Marxian economics.

The Right to Private Property:-

The right to private property is the foundation of Locke’s political philosophy, summarising how each man
relates to God and to other men. Locke explained that man originally exists in a state of nature in which
he needs to answer only to the laws of nature. In this state of nature, men are free to do as they please,
so long as they preserve peace and maintain mankind in general. Because, they have a right to
self-preservation, it follows that they have the right to those things that will help them to survive and make
them happy. God has provided us with all the materials and we need to pursue those ends, but these
natural resources are useless until men apply their efforts to them.

Locke recommended that because all men own their bodies completely, any product of their physical
labour also belongs to them. Consequently, when a man works on some good or material, he becomes
the owner of that good or material. The man who farms the land and has produced food owns the land
and the food that his labour created. The only restriction to private property is that, because God wants all
his children to be happy, no man can take possession of something if he harms another in doing so.

Social contract:-

John Locke avowed that men in the state of nature entered into a contract due to some troubles such as
absence of common law making, law-enforcing and law interpreting agency capable of protecting natural
rights. Therefore, the problem is to form a civil society by common consent of all men and transfer their
right of punishing the violators of Natural Law to an independent and impartial authority. According to
Locke, contract was an agreement of each with all, a surrender by the individual of his personal right to
fulfil the commands of the laws of Nature in return for the guarantee that his rights as nature ordains them
life, liberty and property should be well-maintained.

Locke in his ’Two Treatises on Government’ mentioned the nature of the contract. Each individual
contracts with each to unite into and constitute a community. The end for which this contract is made is
the protection and preservation of property, in the broad sense of the word, that is, life, liberty and
estate-against the dangers both from within and without the community" Lockean contract represents that
each individual agrees to give up not all his natural rights but that one of interpreting and executing the
law of nature and restoring their own grievances. But this right is given not to any person or group of
persons but the community as a whole, that too on the understanding that the natural rights of the
individual to life, liberty and property will be guaranteed by the community.

The Lockean contract was not general as with Hobbes but restricted and specific in character. Locke
wrote in book II that "Men being as has been said by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can
be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent, which is
done by agreeing with other men, to join and invite into a community for their comfortable safe and
peaceable living, one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security
against any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it enquires not the freedom of the
rest they are left, as they were, in the liberty of the state of nature: when any number of men have so
consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated and make one
body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest". It is observed that Lockean
social contract was a bond with the community as a whole resulted in the establishment of that common
political superior, the state, which was supposed to apply the law of Nature.

Locke further elaborated that the newly formed government has three functions - legislative, executive
and federative. The legislative is the supreme power to which all other powers, particularly executive must
be subordinate. The executive power is subordinate to the legislative and is responsible to it. The
federative power is associated with foreign affairs. Though the legislative power is supreme, it is not
subjective. It exists for common good which is the safeguarding of freedom and protection of property.

Locke emphasized that all true states were established by consent. He presumed that a minority would
consent in all things to rule by the majority. Locke was criticized by Filmer that legitimate power combined
power with right. A good government could not be subjective, it was bound by the general laws which
were public and not subject to individual decrees. All individuals would be governed by the same rules as
everyone else, otherwise it would isolate the natural moral equality of individuals. He made clear that
people could use force only against unjust and unlawful authority. The right of obedience could be
exercised by the majority, and not by one person or a small group. Lockean state is limited. It is limited
because it derives power from the people and because it holds power in trust for the people. It is limited
by Natural Law in general and by one most important Natural Law in particular.

Theories of religious tolerance:-

There were three main arguments:

1) Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings generally, cannot dependably evaluate the
truth-claims of competing religious standpoints
2) Even if they could, enforcing a single "true religion" would not have the desired effect, because belief
cannot be compelled by violence
3) Forcing religious uniformity would lead to more social disorder than allowing diversity.
With reference to his position on religious tolerance, Locke was inclined by Baptist theologians like John
Smyth and Thomas Helwys, who had published tracts demanding freedom of conscience in the early 17th
century. Baptist theologian Roger Williams founded the colony Rhode Island in 1636, where he combined
a democratic constitution with unlimited religious freedom. His tract The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for
Cause of Conscience (1644), which was extensively read in the mother country, was a fervent plea for
absolute religious freedom and the total separation of church and state.

To summarize, Locke has distinct position in developing political philosophy. He wrote his two Treatises
on Government against the background of natural law, natural rights, and the contract theory. These
outstanding works were published in 1690 to validate the Superb Revolution of 1688 which ousted the
Roman Catholic James II and put on the throne Protestant William III and Mary. The states of nature, war
and property, are fundamental principles of lockean theory over the political power and legitimate civil
government. The people consent to leave the state of nature, which is full of inconveniences and they
enter the civil state. Within society, they establish a government according to the will of the majority, from
whom the powers derive. The highest position of the legislative power sets the limits within which the
individuals must act as part of one body. According to Locke, the principle of ’just war’ originates from the
human nature and the law of nature. When there is an absolute and arbitrary power that impends the
properties of the people, the people have a right to resist, entering a condition that is similar to the state of
nature; a state of anxiety, fear and inconveniences. After the rebellion of this arbitrary state, people have
the right to re-establish a new government and a new legislative power, creating new rules and forging a
new ’contract’ to govern their lives.