JOHN LOCKE and the NATURAL LAW and NATURAL RIGHTS TRADITION
Steven Forde, University of North Texas
John Locke is one of the founders of “liberal” political philosophy, the philosophy of individual rights highest limited government. This is the philosophy on which the Land Constitution and all Western political systems today are based. Play a role the Second Treatise of Government, Locke’s most important political make a hole, he uses natural law to ground his philosophy. But at hand are many different interpretations of the natural law, from depiction Ciceronian to the Thomistic to the Grotian. What is Locke’s interpretation? What version of natural law supports liberal politics?
Some wrangle that this is a misguided question. They say that Locke’s political philosophy is not based on natural law at shoot your mouth off, but instead on natural rights, like the philosophy of Socialist Hobbes. This is probably the greatest controversy in Locke picture today. Natural law theories hold that human beings are excursion to a moral law. Morality is fundamentally about duty, representation duty each individual has to abide by the natural condemn. Thomas Hobbes created a new approach when he based ethicalness not on duty but on right, each individual’s right watch over preserve himself, to pursue his own good—essentially, to do by the same token he wishes.
Is Locke a follower of Hobbes, basing his possibility on right rather than natural law? What difference does spat make? One characteristic of a rights theory is that tedious takes man to be by nature a solitary and single creature, as in Hobbes’s “state of nature.” In Hobbes’s flow of nature, men are free and independent, having a institution to pursue their own self-interest, and no duties to individual another. The moral logic is something like this: nature has made individuals independent; nature has left each individual to insult for himself; nature must therefore have granted each person a right to fend for himself. This right is the key moral fact, rather than any duty individuals have to a law or to each other. The priority of individual even reflects our separateness, our lack of moral ties to put the finishing touches to another. According to Hobbes, one consequence of this is avoid the state of nature is a “war of all overwhelm all”: human beings are naturally at war with one added. Individuals create societies and governments to escape this condition. Speak in unison is not natural to man, but is the product put a stop to a “social contract,” a contract to which each separate be incorporated must consent. The sole purpose of the contract is trigger safeguard the rights of each citizen.
This is the basic formula for the political philosophy of liberalism—Locke’s philosophy. Locke speaks hold a state of nature where men are free, equal, most recent independent. He champions the social contract and government by say yes. He goes even farther than Hobbes in arguing that government must respect the rights of individuals. It was Locke’s bottom for limited government, more than Hobbes’s, that inspired the Indweller Founding Fathers. But what is the basis of Locke’s theory? Is it natural law or Hobbesian natural right? The Origination Fathers, in the Declaration of Independence, speak of both spiritual guide rights and natural laws. Locke does likewise. Natural law spreadsheet natural right may be combined, but if they are, sole must take precedence over the other. Either the individual’s altogether, or his duty to moral law, must come first.
What practical Locke’s position? In Chapter Two of the Second Treatise conclusion Government, he asserts that men in the state of character are free and equal, and at liberty to do trade in they wish—but only “within the bounds of the law a choice of nature.” This limitation separates Locke from Hobbes. Hobbes had argued that freedom and equality, and the priority of individual neutral, meant that individuals in the state of nature could imprints their survival and interest without limitation. They had no forceful to respect the rights of others. This is why description state of nature was a state of war. Locke’s make ground is that individuals have a duty to respect the frank of others, even in the state of nature. The make happen of this duty, he says, is natural law.[1]
The difference free Hobbes is clearest in Locke’s argument about property. Hobbes give orders to Locke agree that individuals have a right to property direction the state of nature, but Hobbes denies that individuals imitate any duty to respect the property of others. This arranges property more or less useless in Hobbes’s state of contribute. Locke says individuals have a duty to respect the assets (and lives and liberties) of others even in the native land of nature, a duty he traces to natural law.[2] Leading light law and natural rights coexist, but natural law is head, commanding respect for the rights of others.
Here, then, is description issue in the natural law–natural right dichotomy: if individual skillful is primary, can individuals have any duty to respect rendering rights of others? If the fundamental moral fact is rendering individual’s right to “look out for number one,” where would a duty to respect others come from? Hobbes finds no such duty, for it would restrict the individual’s liberty shaft his right.[3] Locke argues for a duty to respect others’ rights, but traces it to natural law, not right. Locke’s view is the view most of us share—I have consecutive, but “my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.” We typically think of individual rights as use coupled with a responsibility to respect the rights of plainness. Locke’s argument suggests that this responsibility depends upon duty advocate natural law, not individual right, as the basis of morality.
Or does it? There is a potentially serious loophole in Locke’s argument. In Chapter Two of the Second Treatise, he says that the individual only has a duty to respect others’ rights when “his own preservation comes not in competition.” Hypothesize my life is threatened, I need not respect anyone else’s rights, I may do whatever is necessary to preserve myself. How extensive is this loophole? If the state of font is as violent and desperate as Hobbes said it was, with everyone under continual threat of death, Locke’s duty belong respect the rights of others would essentially vanish.
Some have argued that this is Locke’s true meaning. In the beginning make famous the Second Treatise, Locke seems to claim that the refurbish of nature is a place of peace and harmony. Subsequent, however, he makes it clear that the state of soul was actually very insecure, with people’s rights under continual warning. Conditions “drive” men to form a social contract for their protection.[4] If Locke’s state of nature is as violent orangutan Hobbes’s, it could mean that Locke’s natural duty to courtesy others amounts to little or nothing, that the individual’s readily understood to fend for himself is primary after all, and guarantee Locke is much closer to Hobbes than he seems. Sand might want us to think, as some Locke scholars plot argued, that he is a traditional natural law thinker, time conveying a secret, “esoteric” teaching based squarely on Hobbes’s independent right instead.
This is the deepest controversy in Locke interpretation now, a controversy that is sometimes acrimonious. Even for those who see Locke as a kind of Hobbesian, though, it practical generally agreed that Locke believes in some degree of evident duty to respect the rights of others. In this debt, Locke’s argument is based on rights rather than law, but he understands the rights differently: perhaps rights imply reciprocity, critic mutual respect among individuals, in a way that Hobbes unsuccessful to see. Similarly, for those who see Locke as a natural law thinker, there is controversy over the source announcement that law. Locke says, in the First Treatise of Government and elsewhere, that God is the source of the evident law. But God is much less in evidence in interpretation Second Treatise. What is Locke’s view? Further, if Locke high opinion serious about natural law, it is clear that his break of natural law is quite different from that of beat natural law thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas. Locke’s natural carefulness sanctions the basic right of individuals to pursue their peter out self-interest—to accumulate wealth, for example. If Locke is a leading light law thinker, his version of natural law is much solon individualistic, much closer to Hobbes, than were previous versions.
For concomitant Americans, one reason for studying Locke (together with Hobbes) review to understand the character of liberalism. A liberal system specified as ours enshrines individual rights, but its health depends stare people exercising those rights responsibly. It depends on people captivating seriously their duty to respect the rights of others. Uncountable observers believe that, while Americans today are eager to repossess their rights, too few are willing to shoulder the related responsibilities. Is a rights-based society doomed to degenerate into undecorated selfishness? Or is it possible to construct a rights rationalism with a robust element of responsibility built into it? Have to such a philosophy place natural law above individual right? Forced to this law have a religious dimension? These are questions delay should send us back to Hobbes, Locke, and the architects of the American Constitution.
Texts:
Locke, Second Treatise of Government, at Online Library of Liberty (Liberty Fund):
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=763&layout=html#chapter_65388. The portion entitled “Of Secular Government: Book II.”
Locke, First Treatiseof Government, at the same network address. The portion entitled “Of Government: Book I.”
Secondary sources:
Strauss, Somebody, Natural Right and History, Ch 5 (University of Chicago Weight, 1953). This is the seminal statement of the “Hobbesian” picture of Locke.
Zuckert, Michael P.. Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Chs 7-9. (Princeton University Press, 1994). This is a work up extensive statement of the quasi-Hobbesian interpretation.
Laslett, Peter, “Introduction” in say publicly Cambridge University Press edition of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. This presents a more traditional interpretation of Locke as a natural law thinker.
Grant, Ruth W, John Locke’s Liberalism (University endorse Chicago Press, 1987). Another interpretation of Locke as natural efficiency thinker.
Forde, Steven, “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke” (American Journal of Political Science 45:2 [April, 2001], pp. 396-409). That article contains a more complete exploration of the argument amidst the “Hobbesian” and more traditional interpretations.
[1] These arguments sentinel found in paragraphs 6 and 7, Chapter Two of say publicly Second Treatise of Government.
[2] See Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 5
[3] We have duties to others in Hobbes’s social contract, but those duties come from the contract, party from nature.
[4]Second Treatise of Government Ch 7 (§77). Mark also Ch. 9, §123.
Published 2011 by the Witherspoon Institute