John Locke

1. John Locke Second Treatise on Government

2. Locke’s Second Treatise I. Liberalism II. Social Contract Theory III. Biographical/Historical Background

3. II. Liberalism • Ascendance of liberalism around the world today • Much of the remaining reading in the course centers around this idea

4. II. Liberalism • Definition • In United States, liberalism means: • Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Ted Kennedy

5. II. Liberalism • Historically, liberalism is built on 2 key ideas: • Limited Government • It was the political solution to the struggle for religious toleration • An Attempt to keep politics out of religion. The state should not worry about the state of men’s souls • Why is this a good idea?

6. II. Liberalism • A key component of limited government is: • Rights • Theoretical underpinning to the notion of religious toleration is that individuals have rights against the state • We each have a right not to be interfered with by the government or by other people • These rights are natural – they accrue to us simply by the fact that we are human beings • A prisoner example

7. Suppose you are a District Attorney in a community that is composed of easily recognizable majority/minority communities. A member of the majority community has been killed and witnesses have reliably identified a member of the minority community as the perpetrator, but the police have been unable to find the exact person The majority community is screaming for vengeance and on the verge of rioting. We know that in the course of the riot, at least 10 people from the minority population will be killed in mob violence. As the DA you suggest the following course of action to the mayor:

8. In order to avert the riot and save lives, you take a member of the minority community at random, accuse that person of the crime, and stage a very public arrest/execution • As the mayor, what do you do?

9. II. Liberalism • Rights mean that no matter how good the consequences of a particular action may be, these consequences cannot override individual rights • Why rights? • Each individual possesses dignity • Each of us is priceless • Roots are in the rise of Christianity • Secularized form – in lieu of soul premise – treat people as ends, not as means to an end • Every human being has infinite weight, so can’t use any calculation to justify hurting some for the greater good

10. II. Liberalism • Side bar: • Suppose superior beings from Planet Twylo descend to earth and tell us they have a food shortage • To alleviate this shortfall, they plan on harvesting human beings • Would we accept the same arguments from them that we offer to justify eating animals or otherwise using animals as means to an end?? • Just food for thought… we won’t pursue it now

11. II. Liberalism • So one component of liberalism is limited government • The second component is capitalism • By capitalism, we mean the idea that as long as a transaction has no negative diseconomies and is mutually advantageous, the transaction is permissible • A deal made between two consenting parties and no one is getting hurt, the state should not get involved in the transaction

12. II. Liberalism • The market is a private place where people voluntarily dispose of their own property • We each have a natural right to property • The overall idea justifying these economic rights is roughly parallel to our political rights in that the state should not interfere with people doing what they want to do with their property

13. II. Liberalism • Note, the argument itself need not be limited exclusively to property and thus exclusively the purview of the (political) right wing • E.g., sexual freedom, drug freedom arguments could work equally well • Since the world is embracing variants of this view today, an examination of its historical evolution and philosophical premises is both warranted and educational

14. II. Liberalism • The key idea linking to the two strains is the primacy of the individual • That is, the individual is the basis of power – political, economic, social. • Political power does not come from divine right or the rule of the stronger, but the will of the people

15. II. Liberalism • 2 Implications • If individuals are basis, then we can’t treat others as means to an end… each is an end unto itself • We are all individuals with separate and equally valuable lives (valuable at least to us)

16. II. Liberalism • Good political society is one which could have emerged from unanimous agreement by these individuals • Locke is not trying to describe an actual historical situation; he’s not doing anthropology • Nonetheless, the description of human nature in this prepolitical situation needs to be accurate otherwise we can reject the conclusions by rejecting the premises

17. II. Liberalism • Question we need to face at root of political philosophy concerns the necessity of the state • That is, if the state did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it? • In other words, is anarchy a viable option for organizing human society? • Note: lots of other animal species are social, but they’re all anarchic

18. II. Liberalism • This question carries with it important implications for understanding the society in which we live in that if political philosophy could not address and satisfactorily rebut anarchist arguments, the state loses much – or indeed all – of its intellectual support

19. III. Contractarianism • What do we mean by contractarianism? • Key idea: • Contractarian theory posits a theory of justice which holds that our political and social institutions are just to the extent to which they could have been the object of a hypothetical agreement among affected persons • This is what we mean when we say that they sign or agree to a social contract

20. III. Contractarianism • Basic Structure of Contractarian Argument • Motivation Thesis • An account of the emotional/psychological factors of the persons • Environment Thesis • Description of the pertinent features of the environment in which the people are obliged to interact

21. III. Contractarianism • State of Nature (Non-Cooperative Outcome) • An account of the non-cooperative interaction of the persons so motivated and so situated • Laws of Nature • Practical principles, the application of which marks each contractor as rational in coming to an agreement on terms of cooperation • Social Contract • The terms of the social and political cooperation on which the people would agree

22. III. Contractarianism • So… on to Locke’s Second Treatise • Reminders: • Remember, the state of nature – the conditions of prepolitical man – need not be read so much as a factual account as a logical construct • It’s part of the argument in that we are postulating prepolitical relations and people and then trying to discover what type of government would they agree to

23. III. Contractarianism • We’ll address a number of questions: • What would cause these people to give up their anarchic relations and form a state? • What would that state look like? • Remember, for the contractarian tradition, the just state is one that could have arisen by mutual agreement • We can choose an institution and ask ourselves “would it have been the object of mutual consent of dissociated individuals?”

24. III. Contractarianism • For example, slavery would not be chosen by mutual consent, so it was an unjust institution

25. III. Locke’s Second Treatise • With the preliminary work behind us, we can dive into the Second Treatise