Locke Flashcards
About
-First scholar of human rights
-Religious (excluded women)
-‘Two Treatises of Government’ - cultural revolution
Written pre-1688 (not an apologist for, advocation of)
-2nd Treatise attempt to provide moral and jurisprudential justification for armed resistance
-Period of Political Instability - Charles I execution, Commonwealth, Restoration, Glorious Revolution
Locke the Liberal?
- Individual liberty at centre
- Human rights as our rights, but liberalism founded on rights against the state
- Nothing more powerful than the state
- Limits on political power - dislike big government
Locke the Apologist?
- For early Capitalism - rampant individualism, market - labour giving things value
- For colonial settlement - policies causing oppression (limiting individual rights) - giving civilisation to Barbarians
Problem of Political Obligation
-Discussed in terms of:
limits of obligation
locus of sovereignty (whom to obey)
difference between legitimate authority and coercion
justification of obligation
-States and government claim moral right to tell you what to do - you have a duty to obey them
Locke’s State of Nature
- Rejects State of War
- All subject to Natural Laws - if in the state of nature OR ruled (pre-political - claimed against and above state)
- Natural Rights = duties of God = God’s Law
- Natural and inalienable rights belonging to human individuals on the basis of humanity
- God gave us freedom - cannot be taken away, cannot give into slavery - not our rights to give away
- State of Nature not a State of War - moral behaviour governed by Law of Nature and Natural Rights
Two Arguments in the State of Nature
- Special Status of all Humans
- Gift of reason - able to see and understand natural laws and rights, no other animal can
- Can figure out for ourselves what duties these laws demand and what natural laws allow us to claim against others - Basic Interests
- Locke’s Natural Law = right of self-preservation and duty of stewardship
- Life/ liberty/ property
- We don’t own the world - don’t destroy, allow those who follow to enjoy
Why Leave the State of Nature?
JUDGEMENT PROBLEM
-Each person possesses the executive power of law of nature - authority to defend against violations (no common judge)
-Inherently unstable - people commonly regard dispute in most favourable light for own cause
SCARCITY PROBLEM
-Est. of property and investing labour to produce crops = more common conflict
-Pressure on resources increase conflict
SO
-Setting up objective judge to settle dispute attractive
Labour and Property
-Inequalities due to property - inequality of achievement okay, but inequality of treatment is not
-Ownership of own labour:
-God’s property but on Earth you own yourself, labour gives you the right to anything
-Mixing labour with resources makes it yours
-The reason commodities valuable!
BUT SUFFICIENCY
-Must leave enough for others - can’t take more than you need - moral limits (not to be greedy)
ENVIORNMENT
-Can’t hoard too much as damage environment
-Duty to self-preserve
-Stewardship means should give more than take!
-Duty to turn resources into something profitable
Emergence of Anti-Absolutist Government / Social Contract
- Covenant among ourselves to form a society
- agree to make collective decisions concerning whole in collective manner - majority decision - Majoritarian decision in favour of establishing government as kind of common judge
- Not through contract between ruler and ruled
- Simply a formation of trust - entrusted with powers, limits set
Obligation to Obey
- Comes from Consent
- As long as government acts on powers we entrusted willingly, it holds them legitimately
- If exceeds powers granted = illegitimate
- If majority withdraws consent = no authority
- Inalienable right to liberty cannot be given away - cannot be obligated by foreign aggressors
- Government’s 2 legitimacy criteria
1. Rights requirement - must respect natural rights, including liberty
2. Consent Requirement
Role of the State
- John Stewart Mill - life without behaviour restraints little/ no worth
- State possess monopoly on legitimate physical force within territory - state responsible to protect
- Legitimate force/ coercion
- Forfeit rights to protect ourselves
- BUT no state lives up to ideal - murder rates in cities - fail to protect citizens
Problems with Consent
- Consent on the right scale
- Is it plausible that everyone consented?
- More likely limited no. of people consent at particular point to form society - Problem of later generations
- Bind subsequent generations who couldn’t have been present at the initial gesture of consent
- Surely on-going consent required?
Types of Consent
- Express Consent - signing document/ declaring allegiance
- very hard to find in modern democratic states
- more likely implicit - applying for passport/ voting
- BUT those who don’t vote? - Tacit Consent
- For someone to keep living in state and using public infrastructure
- BUT contemporary world less plausible - nowhere to go! - Hypothetical Consent
- What someone might consent to if were consulted
- In state of nature would rationally choose a state
Grounds for Rightful Resistance
- Resistance is natural claim right of citizen - if break down (genocide, tyranny, mass oppression)
- Idea of agreement between ruler and subject limits power - subjects at some point claim exceeded
- Political civil society has 2 parts: people and the government
Resistance on Grounds of Legitimacy
- Gov. not legitimate if people conquered/ no consent obtained
- No authority SO may be resisted
- Gov could lose authority - if violates terms of trust, exceeding bounds of power
- Via trying to exercise powers that hadn’t been granted
