Locke / Lecture 8
.docCORE11-120 Lecture Week Eight
Locke on Natural Rights the Legitimacy of Government
Today we take a look at the political philosophy of Hobbes’ most important successor: English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). John Locke is widely regarded as the greatest of all English philosophers. He did important work in epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics and philosophy of language as well as political philosophy. He wrote two philosophical masterpieces: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Two Treatises on Government (published anonymously, also in 1689). The lecture today examines some of the main themes from the second (and more significant) of the Two Treatises of Government.
Locke makes for a fascinating contrast with Hobbes. The Second Treatise is often interpreted as an attempted refutation of Hobbes’s Leviathan, however Locke and Hobbes also share common ground. Like Hobbes, Locke thinks that the legitimacy of government is based on a tacit or implied social contract. Like Hobbes, he also sees the social contract as a rational response to deficiencies within the state of nature. On many important details, however, Hobbes and Locke disagree.
Let us start with Locke’s characterization of the state of nature. Recall that Hobbes thought that the state of nature would be a state of war of all against all. Locke’s view of the state of nature is much less dire. The reason for this is that Locke considered humans to be naturally moral beings. We do not always or automatically act well, but we all have the capacity to understand what it is to act well. Humans have a moral conscience, and would have a conscience even in the state of nature. Hobbes, by contrast, thought that our moral character is derived from civil society. He thinks that decency and virtue are achievements of civilization, not features of unadorned human nature. According to Locke, however, we not only have a conscience in the state of nature, we also have rights. Locke famously asserts the existence of natural rights, and with them, natural law.
By natural law, Locke means just what Aquinas meant: it is a prescription of the way we ought to act, which reflects God’s authority over us, and is something that we can discover for ourselves just because we are human and rational. This differs from what Hobbes thought of as “Laws of Nature”: Hobbes’s laws of nature are rational principles of prudence (e.g. seek peace) and rational consistency (honour covenants). Although Locke and Aquinas share a belief in natural law, they nonetheless had a different ideas about what is involved natural law. Recall that Aquinas says that natural law enjoins us to seek good and avoid evil (and do so in ways that respect the fundamental goods of life, procreation, society, knowledge, etc.). According to Locke, by contrast, natural law enjoins us to respect others’ natural rights. Locke argues that we are everywhere and always in possession of these rights – rights that we possess naturally, simply in virtue of our humanity, and not in virtue of our belonging to a particular society, or class, or club. This is the idea that would eventually develop into the contemporary conception of human rights.
What are our natural rights, according to Locke? We have three: a right to life, liberty, and property. Our right to life, according to Locke, is a right not to be killed or allowed to die when we could readily be saved. Our right to liberty is the right not to have our activities interfered with so long as we aren’t interfering with the activities of others. The right to property is the most interesting natural right. Even without any social arrangements to support private ownership, Locke thinks we can recognize when something is legitimately controlled and used by another (i.e. is truly their property). A right to property is the right to acquire things which are as yet unowned (this is called original acquisition), a right to exchange things with others, a right to give things away, and a right not to have your property stolen or seized or otherwise forced from you. I will have more to say about Locke on property below.
So there are natural rights in the state of nature, and people in the state of nature would be aware of this (provided they are clear-headed enough). Along with natural rights come duties. If I have a right to life, then you have a duty to rescue me if you easily can. If I have a right to liberty, then you have a duty to leave me to do my own thing (providing doing my own thing doesn’t involve infringing on the liberty of others). Of course, the mere fact that there are these rights and duties in the state of nature, and people are aware of this fact, doesn’t mean that people in the state of nature will always respect them. But it does mean that they will respect them often enough to make life in the state of nature a much more peaceable and contented affair than the life envisaged by Hobbes. According to Locke, the state of nature is not going to be a war of all against all.
But what sense can there be to the claim that the state of nature is realm of natural law and natural right if there is no authority and no civil power to support them? Who will enforce natural rights if there is no civil authority? Locke answers that when a natural right is violated in the state of nature, then the injured party or their family and friends will act as judge, jury and executioner. This minimal enforcement is sufficient to evade the anarchic war of all against all that Hobbes imagined. But it is hardly satisfactory. For a start, as the victim or a friend of the victim, you are hardly in a position accurately determine any violation of natural law and justly respond to it. Secondly, it will often enough be the case that you are not able to adequately enforce natural law: say, for example, that the perpetrator has run off with your goods and you have not the means to track him down. A more objective, secure, and effective means of law enforcement than any available in the state of nature would be highly valuable, if we could secure it without too much cost. This is the value of civil society. This is why it would make sense to get out of the condition of the state of nature and create a civil society.
Hobbes’s social contract was a covenant between all people in a state of nature to give the governance of their own lives up to a sovereign. In return, people get security and access to all the goods of civilization that are dependent upon security. Locke’s vision of the social contract is quite different. In Locke’s view, a proper transition from the state of nature to a civil society would consist in two logically distinct steps. First, a social contract is made; this is a free, uncoerced, agreement between people in the state of nature that they be governed by the principle of majority rule. In the next step of the process, the majority will create (e.g. vote in) a governing body that will enact laws and enforce them. (This needn’t be a democratic parliament – it could be a monarchy if that’s what the majority wanted. Locke recommends, however, that the branches of government – the legislature and the executive – be separated, so there is an effective balance of power in government.)
The positive laws passed by this governing body must be consistent with natural law if it is to remain a legitimate government. Either the laws regulate and protect natural rights – e.g. they encode adequate property rights – or they must be directed toward the benefit of citizens with the approval of the majority. Even in the latter case, the benefit of the majority cannot be won at the expense of the natural rights of the minority. For example, a majority may be in favour of stripping all property from a minority religion (e.g. the Catholic Church in 17th century England). Even if the majority approved of this course of action, or indeed wanted it desperately, such a law would not be just because it violates natural rights. Natural rights function in civil society as a means of avoiding tyranny of the majority and the abuse of minorities.
Because the legitimacy of government depends upon the consent of the majority and the respect of natural rights, it is possible for governments to exist without legitimacy. In these cases, says Locke, rebellion and revolution are just. (Note, this is the exact reverse of Hobbes’s view.) Locke’s views on the legitimacy of revolution were highly influential. Indeed, much of Locke’s political philosophy exerted a great influence on the founding fathers of the United States.
A government is legitimate only because everyone has tacitly agreed to abide by majority rule, thinks Locke. (Notice, this is very different from saying that the majority has agreed to abide by its own rule.) How can Locke say that we have given such consent? We show our consent by continuing to live in the civil society so formed. But forced agreement is not true consent, so it must be that we aren’t forced to live in our society. And Locke thinks that, indeed, we aren’t forced to live in our society; we have the option of migrating, for example. And because the state of nature is not the disaster Hobbes imagined it to be, we always have the option of opting out. Any legitimate government must allow its citizens some possibility of opting out. Otherwise it is not operating under genuine consent of its people.
Recall that one of our three natural rights, according to Locke, is the right to property. Indeed he thinks that one of the chief virtues of the move to civil society is that it is very difficult in a state of nature to adequately protect this right. But how can there be such a thing as property before there exists any of the institutions that support private ownership: e.g. laws of contract, laws of inheritance, a monetary system, and so on? Locke needs a theory about what property is and how it comes about, one that makes the facts of property ownership independent of institutional support.
How do you ever acquire property? You might be given it. But then, how did the gift-giver acquire the property to give? You might earn it or trade for it. But how did your employer or trading partner own the means to provide wages or the goods to trade with? Perhaps they were given them, earned them, or traded for them. But we can’t go on asking these questions, forever. We need a theory about the first origins of property. How did anyone every acquire property for the very first time? To a first approximation, Locke’s theory is this: something becomes property for the very first time if it is not owned by anybody and you mix your labour with it. To mix your labour with something is work to improve it or make it more useable. For example, if you are wandering through a forest – one that is not owned by anyone – and you pick up a stick, you can’t be said to own the stick. It isn’t your stick, yet. It’s just a stick picked up. But say you whittle away at it, making it into a carving of a snake. It now becomes your snake-carving. Consider another example. Say you encounter a pear tree – unowned by anyone. If you go to the trouble of picking the pears and placing them in your bag, you now own the pears. You have changed them from relatively inaccessible fruit, to picked fruit, fruit that is ready to eat. So the pears are now yours. (The pear tree isn’t yours because you haven’t done anything to improve it.)
There are two further conditions on original acquisition. First, you must not acquire so much that it spoils or so much that you can’t make proper use of it. Second, you must leave enough and as good behind you. Say there is only one pear tree in the region and pears are popular. You don’t own the pears if you pick all of them, or even most of them. Nor do you own the pears if you only pick the best and juiciest of them, leaving behind only over-ripe or worm infested pears. You might claim ownership, of course, by you do not own the pears by natural right; you do not have a natural right to the pears you have taken in this way, according to Locke.
Locke’s theory of property is an important element of his political philosophy. It constitutes the most important reason to create a civil society. Whereas Hobbes thinks of civil society as, above all else, the protector of our security, Locke thinks of civil society as, above all else, the protector of our property.