It is unnecessary to demonstrate at length the scale of Locke’s reputation or the ambiguity of his heritage. As John Dunn puts it:
“He was the man in whose name the American Revolution was made, the man whose doctrine in his own lifetime was seen as the indictment of the British ascendancy in Ireland, the man whose name stood between the leader of the first British working-class political organization” (3, p. 5).
I find these words the perfect place to begin.
Life
Locke lived from 1632 to 1704—the same year Pufendorf and Spinoza were born.
“He was as much of a mere Englishman as a universal genius could be, though he spent two critical periods of his life abroad, in France from 1675 to 1679 and in Holland from 1683 to 1689” (1, p. 16).
Bacon was a lawyer and politician, Newton was an academic, and Hobbes a tutor of noblemen. Locke, by contrast, was quite ordinary: he entered Oxford at the age of 20 and remained a full member of his college—if only nominally—in his later years. He was a scholar, but not a particularly distinguished one.
Locke became famous only in his later years.
After leaving Oxford, he became closely involved with Lord Ashley, the Earl of Shaftesbury—one of the most influential political figures of the time. This marked a turning point in his career, shifting him from academia to political and practical affairs. Locke first joined Shaftesbury’s household as a physician, helping to treat his illness. This role provided him with financial stability and direct access to political and intellectual circles, shaping his later career.
“He advised and directed an operation—an operation at a time when surgery was butchery—to remove the abscess on the liver and to insert a little pipe through the stomach wall as a drain to prevent another abscess from forming. Ashley wore the pipe for the rest of his life” (1, p. 25).
Shaftesbury was a prominent Whig leader in Parliament, and through his association, Locke became deeply involved in political life and gained significant influence.
As Peter Laslett writes, “1689 was a year of great climacteric in the life of Locke. As a result of the Revolution, the obscure exile became a man of political influence, with powerful friends in high places. … In the fifteen years left to him he twisted his fingers round the half of English intellectual life and got so firm a grasp that it pointed at last in the direction which he had chosen” (1, p. 37).
Today, we will talk about Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. The book was published with the date 1690 on the title page, so it is likely intended to justify the Whig Glorious Revolution of 1688. But Laslett thinks it was written earlier:
“The conjunction of events which set his mind at work at these things must be sought at an earlier period. Two Treatises in fact turns out to be a demand for a revolution to be brought about, not the rationalization of a revolution in need of defence” (1, p. 47).
John Locke vs. Sir Robert Filmer
Locke’s work was a response to the prominent monarchist Sir Robert Filmer, whose book Patriarcha argued that true freedom could only exist under monarchical rule. Filmer claimed that all government is absolute monarchy because no one is born free.
Filmer’s main thesis is that “men are not naturally free.” To prove this, he argued that people are born subject to their parents and therefore cannot be free. He refers to this parental authority as monarchical power, paternal power, and the right of fatherhood. Filmer assures us that this paternal rule began with Adam, continued through the patriarchs before the Flood, emerged with Noah and his sons, and established all monarchs on Earth.
First, since authority originally belonged to Adam, Filmer claims that not only Adam himself but also the patriarchs who descended from him inherited a monarchical power over their children by virtue of their paternal role. According to his view, this paternal authority, beginning with Adam, was the basis for all legitimate rule. In Filmer’s reasoning, accepting the idea that people are naturally free would mean rejecting the divine origin of political authority, as rooted in the creation of Adam.
However, I fail to see why Adam’s creation—an act in which he simply received life directly from God’s hand—granted him sovereign authority over anything. Therefore, I also cannot understand why assuming the existence of natural freedom would mean denying Adam’s creation.
Locke points out that Filmer’s whole argument for absolute monarchy rests on one idea: that no one is born free. To make his case, Filmer leans heavily on scripture—but not always honestly. For example, when he brings up the biblical commandment to “honor thy father and mother,” he quietly drops the mother from the equation. Locke isn’t buying it. He sees this as a clear sign that Filmer is picking and choosing only what supports his theory. In reality, scripture talks about honoring both parents equally, and Locke uses this to challenge the idea that political power naturally belongs only to fathers—or kings.
It is clear that God joins both parents together without distinction: “Honour thy mother and thy father,” and “Every man shall fear his mother and his father.” That is the style of both the Old and New Testaments. The power of parents is just the duty to care during the imperfect time of childhood. We are born free just as we are born rational. A child is free by his father’s title, by his father’s understanding, which governs him until he has his own.
So, not only Adam but his successors had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children. The First Treatise is entirely devoted to refuting Filmer’s arguments. Locke systematically dismantles the idea that political authority originates from Adam’s paternal rights. At the start of the Second Treatise, he concludes that if Filmer’s claims have been shown to be unfounded—as he believes they have—then no present-day ruler can claim legitimate power based on Adam’s supposed dominion or fatherhood. Therefore, Locke argues, we must search for a different foundation for political authority—one not based on lineage or divine inheritance, but on a new and rational origin of government.
“Political power, then, I think to be a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defense of the commonwealth from foreign injury—and all this for the public good” (2, p. 192).
Of the State of Nature
“To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (2, p. 192).
This equality of men by Nature appears self-evident.
“But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession… The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (2, p. 193).
“For in the state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do” (2, p. 194).
It is unreasonable for individuals to act as judges in their own cases, as self-interest breeds bias, while passion and vengeance can lead to excessive punishment. This results in disorder and instability. Thus, government exists to restrain partiality and violence. Civil rule is a necessary remedy to the inconveniences of the state of nature, where personal judgment often leads to injustice and conflict.
“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will of any legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule” (2, p. 202).
The Right of Private Property
Private property is one of the central ideas in the Second Treatise. It arises precisely to make basic rights possible—without food, we can hardly speak about a right to live. Locke shows how private property emerged and what its first implications are.
“It is very clear that God, as King David says, ‘has given the earth to the children of men,’ given it to mankind in common. And God hath also given them reason to make use of the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. All the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them… Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a ‘property’ in his own ‘person.’ This nobody has any right to but himself. The ‘labour’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his” (2, p. 205).
To find nourishment, man gathers apples from the tree. So, “When did they begin to be his?So, when did the apples become his? When he brought them home? Or when he picked them up? That labour put a distinction between them and the common, adding something beyond what nature, the common mother of all, had done. Or when he brought them home? Or when he picked them up? That labour put a distinction between them and the common. That added something to them—more than Nature, the common mother of all, had done” (2, p. 205).
This is the law of nature about the beginning of property. And this law, at the same time, also bounds that property: “As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labour fix a property in” (2, p. 206).
Whether we consider natural reason—which tells us that once people are born, they have the right to self-preservation and therefore to food, drink, and the necessities of life—or whether we consider revelation, which recounts the gifts of the Earth granted to Adam and to Noah and his sons, it is entirely clear, as David says (Psalm 115:16), that “the earth He has given to the children of men”, meaning that God gave it to all humanity.
Men may gather a hundred apples and thereby gain property in them, provided they use them before they spoil. If he bartered apples for nuts that lasted a whole year, he did no wrong.
“And thus came into use money; some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling; and that by mutual consent, men would take in exchange for the truly useful but perishable support of life” (2, p. 214).
The struggle between the Crown and Parliament gave rise to the English Liberal Tradition, beginning with Locke’s political individualism. Locke’s focus was on the individual and their rights—the starting point is always the person and their interests, not any group, no matter the size. We have explored how Locke came to this conclusion and its implications, such as the theory of private property. Next time, we will discuss his theory of civil society and politics.
The picture of John Locke
Author: Sir Godfrey Kneller
Year: circa 1687–1689
Source: Wikimedia Commons
License: Public Domain, free to use
Bibliography
- Two Treatises of Government, with introduction and critical apparatus, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge, 2003.
- Two Treatises on Civil Government, London: Routledge, 1887.
- John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke, Cambridge, 1995.
- The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. J.H. Burns, Cambridge, 2008.
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