Copyright 2006 by Tad Beckman, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA 91711
Some Biographical Background John Locke was born in 1632 near Bristol, England, during the reign of Charles I. His father was an attorney. During the English Civil War (1642-1651) he fought on the side of Parliament against the Royalists. Charles I was tried and convicted of treason against the people of England for which he was beheaded in August of 1649. The war continued, however, since Charles II claimed his right to the throne. Nevertheless, Oliver Cromwell lead the Parliamentary army to a final victory by 1651. Thus began Cromwell's (and England's) famous Commonwealth.
Locke went up to Oxford University in 1652 and discovered the philosophers, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes. At Oxford, he took full advantage of the Commonwealth's "rule of tolerance" and became a truly free thinker. The era of tolerance was short lived, unfortunately; and in 1660, Charles II was restored to the monarchy. Locke turned away from philosophy and began studies in medicine. In this connection, he came to know Boyle (chemistry), Sydenham (medicine), and Hooke (physics). The sciences pointed Locke toward a clear-headed appreciation of observation and direct reasoning.
The next phase of Locke's life was spent in association with the Earl of Shaftesbury (Chancellor of the Exchecquer during the Restoration), who helped him acquire several political positions. While Shaftesbury was a royalist, he continued to have problems with Charles II's religious views and lack of tolerance toward the Puritans. Indeed, Charles's need for money was pushing him toward an alliance with Catholic France and, meanwhile, his brother James II was viewed with fear as a potential Catholic successor. Ultimately, Shatesbury was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. While he was released, he saw little future in England and fled to the Netherlands. Locke, too, removed to France and then the Netherlands (1683). Locke's life in the Netherlands was very productive, writing Letter on Toleration (1685), Essay on Human Understanding (1690), Two Treatises of Government (1690), and The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in Scripture (1692).
Back in England, James II had indeed succeeded Charles II and this had lead to a very tense situation in which the English Protestants watched James's tendencies toward Catholicism. James was married to a Catholic and, when he had a son and heir, it was clear that something would have to be done. An alliance was formed in Parliament and an invitation was sent to William of Orange and his wife Mary to assume the throne in England. William and his army landed in England in 1689 but there was no bloodshed since James's army deserted him and James fled to France. Rather soon thereafter, James took a French army to Ireland from where he attempted to re-assert his authority. However, William landed in Ireland and ultimately defeated James at the Battle of the Boyne. Meanwhile, William and Mary were installed as king and queen of England. It is important to note, however, that the rule of William and Mary established an entirely new sense of the monarchy in England. For they were invited to rule by the people and they accepted rule jointly with Parliament.
The Social Contract Locke had become acquainted with William of Orange in the Netherlands and accompanied him to England in 1689. As we will see in his Treatises. . ., his political thinking anticipated the kind of relation between people, monarch, and parliament that would develop in the years to come. The absolute rule of English monarchs had traditionally been asserted as a "divine right." Kingship was traced backward to the paternal rule of Adam and the king was answerable only to God. The king's power encompassed legislative, executive, and judicial functions all in one. The king could exercise the power of death over any citizen at any time.
While he was a royalist, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) denied the divine right of monarchy and, instead, offerred a "naturalistic" account of how monarchy derives its authority from the will of the people. Hobbes, the antithesis of Locke, fled into exile in the Netherlands during the Commonwealth and returned to England with the Restoration. His great work of political philosophy, The Leviathan, was published in 1651. Copies of the book frequently bore an illustration of Charles II made entirely out of tiny Englishmen. It was natural, then, for Locke to follow Hobbes's argument for the creation of commonwealth out of the people's sovereignty. As a long-term parliamentarian, however, Locke took the argument in an entirely new direction when he argued against absolute monarchy and examined the constitution of government for the commonwealth.
What, then, is the naturalistic argument for sovereignty and the formation of commonwealth? Like Hobbes, Locke describes a "state of nature" in which humans supposedly live if all government and social institutions are stripped away. This picture of a state of nature is somewhat different from that described by Plato in his Republic; Plato concentrated on the ways in which a developing city state would resolve and reflect the growing complexity of life. The 17th Century view of natural life presumed this complexity and stepped beyond to assumptions about natural human inclinations. In fact, in the 17th Century view of humankind, men will not restrain themselves from brutish behavior and will steal anything they want or need. In this view, a state of nature soon becomes a "state of war." Hobbes described this state of war in the following way:
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
In short, humans are incapable of living on their own and authority over them is needed in some way. This view certainly justified a strong monarchy and the piece by Hobbes, above, makes it implicitly clear that we owe more than just peace and justice to authority but also all the benefits of technology and the arts. Nevertheless, both Hobbes and Locke saw that the people themselves must create this authority over themselves by forming a "social contract" in which they agree to suspend their individual powers of war and recognize a single institution of authority above them. Hobbes summarizes this in the following:
"Therefore before the names of just and unjust can have place, there must be some coercive power to compel men equally to the performance of their covenants, by the terror of some punishment greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their covenant, and to make good that propriety which by mutual contract men acquire in recompense of the universal right they abandon: and such power there is none before the erection of a Commonwealth."
For Hobbes, the people literally erect the monarchy over themselves, complete with the power of death; they are the authors of the monarch's will.
Locke, of course, did not assume that the erection of a commonwealth necessarily meant the erection of an absolutist monarchy. The commonwealth is essentially the institutionalized authority of the people, created by their social contract. It can take different forms depending upon the cultural readiness of the people.
Both Hobbes and Locke argued that humans already live under a "law of nature" even while in a state of nature outside of civil society. This is a divine gift to humans and is closest to what we call "reason." The concept of a natural law that is accessable to us through the exercise of reason is another aspect of the argument that sovereign authority actually comes from the people themselves. Note, below, how much the language of natural law and social contract pervades the opening statements of our Declaration of Independence.
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Locke leaves no doubt that political society derives from the consent of the people and that they do this of their own choosing so as to secure their well being. In a state of nature/war each individual must execute his own defense of life and property, and people are far better off to give this power over to political society where the executive authority can be managed collectively. Indeed, by our consent, political society becomes legislator, executive, and judge in all matters of natural law. True liberty lies in the pursuit of life under standing laws duly legislated and executed by our own authority.
One of the more interesting aspects of Locke's discussion is his treatment of property. Like Aristotle, Locke views the natural accumulation of property as the provision for one's own needs by the mixing of one's labor with those resources provided by nature. Both make it quite clear that reason prohibits us from waste; that is, one should never put aside more provisions than one (and one's family) can consume. But at the same time, both realized that the invention of a currency of exchange makes it possible for us to accumulate an unlimited amount of property and becomes the basis for large differences in wealth. Locke sees this as "unnatural;" yet his work is right at that historical moment when large amounts of wealth are beginning to be accumulated by the rising merchant class and just prior to the powerful beginning of the Capitalist Revolution. In Locke's mind, it is property that looms large as a motive for ending the state of war by contracting to come into civil society. While it is difficult to protect one's own provisions, it is almost impossible to protect alone one's extended property; thus, contemporary political society is virtually made essential by the existence of property as finance capital. The issue of property was especially important in the development of America since all of the land was originally in a state of nature (so far as Europeans were concerned!) and the division and development of land and other resources was essential from the beginning. It is little wonder that property plays so significant a role in our Constitution and that American government devotes so much attention to production of property.
The Commonwealth
It is important to recognize that the initial act(s) of consent [followed by the "tacit consent" of all those born within] founds the sovereign commonwealth itself but does not form the government. It is only after sovereignty has been established by this social contract that suitable government can be formed. Equally well, if that government should be erased in some way, the sovereign people remain and still possess the power to form another government. Only in case of conquest does the sovereignty come into doubt, in which case people may be free to form into new unions by contract.
In Locke's view, the first order of forming government is formation of the legislative power. This is reasonable because, according to all that he has assumed in his argument, the principal ruling power is natural law as established by reason. Since the people surrender their own right to reason through natural law and to execute it alone, their first need is to set up that legislative body that will interpret natural law into acceptable standing laws of the commonwealth. The legislative authority is restrained in two ways --- by natural law (and reason) itself and by the fact that their authority must always be exercised for the common good. Not only do these concepts come out of Locke's reasoning but they come directly out of recent English history in which Parliament takes power and rules jointly with William of Orange.
There are great advantages to legislative authority in a commonwealth over the situation, in a state of nature, wherein individuals must reason through natural law. Individuals are obviously variable in their reasoning abilities and, furthermore, they may be swayed by personal interests or passions. The legislature can debate laws openly and a settled rule of law can be established. Fortunately or unfortunately, however, the legislature can only function on a majoritarian principle. This is necessitated, according to Locke, by the need to act even when there are disagreements. It would be wrong for people to consent to give up their own power only for the collective power to remain helplessly deadlocked by disagreements.
Locke also sees the need for an executive authority which must execute the laws, seeing to it that violators are brought to justice --- something that the legislative authority should not have to do. Closely connected to this is a "federative authority" or power to represent the commonwealth to the outside world. The one issue that Locke ignores is the judicial authority and the possibility that it should be separate from the executive.
Locke himself was not far enough removed from the English monarchy to offer the possibility of an executive less powerful than a king, though the potential is certainly there within the free exercise of government-formation possessed by the people. Thus, assuming a monarchy ruling in conjunction with a legislative authority, the question of the monarch's prerogative surfaces. Clearly, the executive should be able to exercise certain prerogatives in order to allow the commonwealth to run efficiently and to effectively protect the common good. But how far should prerogatives extend?
The volume ends with discussions of conquest, usurpation, tyranny, and the dissolution of government. Of greatest interest, perhaps, is Locke's belief that government ends when the people's trust is violated. Thus, governments end usually because monarchs rebel against the people, not the other way around. By the time the people "rebel" the government really no longer exists as a legitimate government of the people. It is in this mood that we should read our own Declaration of Independence the bulk of which is given over to an enumeration of the many ways in which the reign of George III had alienated the trust of the colonies.
Updated on February 9, 2006; click here to return to My HomePage or here to return to Course Index Page.