John Locke (1632-1704)
- John Locke was an Oxford scholar, medical researcher and
physician, political operative, economist and ideologue for a
revolutionary movement, as well as being one of the great philosophers
of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.
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| John Locke |
- Was highly regarded as a scientific and political thinker
- He wrote Essay Concerning Human Understanding, an examination of the human capacity to understand.
- We
can, he thinks, know with certainty that God exists. We can also know
about morality with the same precision we know about mathematics,
because we are the creators of moral and political ideas.
- Despite his unshaking faith in God, Locke was an empiricist,
believing that all knowledge comes from experience. Locke’s belief can
be best summed up with the idea that humans are born with a blank slate
(tabula rasa) ready to be added to by experience. Humans are not innately good or bad, in this view.
- Two Treatises Concerning Civil Government were published after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
- Also
wrote about the importance of tolerance, particularly in the sense of
religion. As a result, he argued for a separation of church and state.
View on Government
- Locke’s big picture argument is that that government
rests on popular consent and rebellion is permissible when government
subverts the ends (the protection of life, liberty, and property) for
which it is established.
- Disagreement with Hobbes. Hobbes
believed that before government, humans existed in a state of perpetual
conflict, with no culture or civility. Locke maintained that the
original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and
tolerance. He further maintained that all human beings, in their
natural state, were equal and free to pursue life, health, liberty, and
possessions; and that these were inalienable rights.
- Thus, rights are natural, not artifical constructs given by a government.
Property Rights
According to Professor W.H. Hutt, “”
Limits to Government Power
The government cannot legitimately take power that is greater than that
which people had in a state of nature. Locke writes that the power of
legislators is:
is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that hath
no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to
destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects... To this
end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society they
enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands
as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by
declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be
at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of Nature." (Second Treatise, Ch. 11.)
Social Contract Theory
Humans as rational beings assented to diminish their personal autonomy for the protecting function of government.
Separation of Powers
As a proponent of limited governance, Locke was skeptical of giving
more power than was absolutely necessary to one group of people or one
person. The most effective governments would share powers.
You Say You Want a Revolution?
If a government subverts the ends for which it was created then it
might be deposed; indeed, Locke asserts, revolution in some
circumstances is not only a right but an obligation. Locke came to the
conclusion that the "ruling body if it offends against natural law must
be deposed."
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