|Originally published: 1690
THE SECOND TREATISE ON
Information overload is a modern phenomenon that distorts the big picture
and erodes our understanding of first principles. In the maelstrom of fact
and opinion, many are the critics who attempt to define liberty for us,
almost always with a political slant; yet we seldom find individuals who can
clearly articulate the essence of their freedom and understand its attendant
obligations. The danger in this circumstance is that taking freedom for
granted or ignoring its accompanying responsibilities are the two surest
ways to lose one's independence. It is disquieting that comprehending the
indispensable conjunction of freedom and obligation is increasingly rare.
John Locke's Second Treatise on
Civil Government brings us back to the basics of liberty and duty, to
first principles. He offers a cogent look at what we seem to have lost sight
of today. Since Locke investigates freedom at the inception of modern times,
when problematic aspects of its nature were still relatively simple, his
conclusions are among the clearest and most persuasive.
To a degree,
Locke writes in opposition to fellow-countryman Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679),
his predecessor in time and theory and author of Leviathan (1651). Hobbes holds that the state is a necessary evil, a
beast-like Leviathan that is crucial to controlling men’s self-interest.
For Hobbes, the state is the sole antidote to anarchy.
He saw that religion had failed in its efforts to bring peace
among men, that religion had actually caused more conflict than it resolved.
Hobbes thus relegates religion to a separate and secondary role and contends that men
must submit to government because they ultimately fear one
another more than
they fear a central authority. This suspicion later received some validation
in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789 when “citizens”—who
were expected to respect one another once the monarchy was
destroyed—proceeded to treat each other in an utterly barbaric and lawless
fashion. Their behavior remained unchecked by the predicted but failed
advent of reciprocal good will.
understands mankind’s individualistic and often self-serving nature and
feels the need to restrain that with a Leviathan—in his case, a monarchy.
But Hobbes’s solution doesn’t sit well with either Locke or Adam Smith,
whose Wealth of Nations (Chapter 12), published almost a century after
Locke wrote, elaborated an alternative, more practical and positive view of
human nature. For Smith and implicitly for Locke, mankind’s true spirit
flourishes in the inducements of enlightened
self-interest and ordered liberty.
This proved to be a more accurate and helpful understanding of human nature,
as was seen when
and its foundation of freedom came into being. Without denying the venal
aspects of the human condition, enlightened self-interest posits that we can
do well for ourselves by doing well for and with others (mutual cooperation,
the division of labor, the advent of interpersonal charity, the creation of
community). In other words,
doing well for ourselves while engaging others in like-minded activities is
not a selfish or negative concept; it is quite the opposite.
Locke and Smith view society as a
largely cooperative venture rather than a continuous power struggle. Their
outlook became the foundation of self-government in the centuries following
the publication of both The Second Treatise on Civil Government and Wealth
of Nations. Of course, certain freedoms that bring out the best in some
men also bring out the worst in others. There thus remains the need for
authority-but not absolute authority. Whoever holds absolute authority
(whether as a monarch/executive/bureaucrat, a legislator, or a judge) is still
human. The tendency is always toward self-aggrandizement and self-interest
at the expense of others when power is conferred. The practical result
requires that there be checks and balances on those given power to prevent
them from over-reaching. It also
requires a separation of church and state to prevent religious edict from
becoming civil tyranny.
The value of Locke's insights became
self-evident after the implications of Hobbes's speculations (unrestrained
power) were taken to their logical endpoint. In contrast to Hobbes's
abstract and theoretical approach, Locke draws his conclusions from evidence
experience. His first premise-that liberty is not a
license-recognizes that freedom is a real-world equation, not just an
intellectual concept. For Locke, before cultures or civilizations evolved,
each man was in a "state of nature" and individually responsible
for protecting his own natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and
controlling, even punishing, those who violated those rights. When people
agreed to form a civil society or community for the purpose of collectively
protecting life and property, rules were piled on top of rules until we were
left with modern attempts at government. The problem of how to contain the
ever-proliferating rules and those who exercise power remained.
For Locke, the supreme authority in a
social/governmental undertaking designed and controlled by its members
(called a commonwealth) is the legislature; this body creates laws in a
public forum that are to be made known to the populace in advance and
applied with equal force to all individuals. In Locke's view this
"social contract"-a contract among the people, and between
the people and their government-requires the sort of definition that comes
from a representative assembly, made up of the people themselves. In this
democratic format legislators create the rules by which everyone (in a
communal, majoritarian sense) is willing to be governed. Locke is equally
aware of the need for amendability, for change such that when the majorities
or the realities are altered the rules necessarily are mutable. Society's
fluid nature is recognized from the outset and this fosters confidence in
the fairness of the legislative process.
These rules, by which and through which
agreement was achieved on most matters involving human relations, were
neither black nor white, nor did they always fit foursquare with human
activities. There was a need for impartial judgment in applying, or
enforcing them, thus the executive branch of government was born. And for
those times when the citizens disagree with the executive or the legislature
Locke creates a judiciary for the interpretation and interpolation of laws,
to arbitrate when the governors and the citizens arrive at odds.
In designing his system, Locke takes
into account man's inherently contradictory nature-which is alternately
generous and self-centered. He argues that a rational tension between
centers of authority is needed in order to protect not just the people, but
the system itself; in this manner he seeks to reduce the effect of
self-interest. He views a separation of power between all three governing
entities as indispensable to controlling potential errant human impulses.
A century later James Madison
recognized there are benefits as
well as disadvantages to individual self-interest (as did Adam Smith at almost the exact same
moment) and refined Locke’s broad ideas.
observed that the world is based on and proceeds as individuals act and
react. Thus, we must use man
himself, not just government, to counterbalance another man’s unrestrained
impulses, the impulse toward self-realization that can go too far, and in
doing that we will also act toward the public’s interest—for the
public’s interest is in each person having his own rights, his individual
freedom, intact. As
self-interests are allowed to battle openly and rationally they constrain or
complement one another. If we
try to eliminate self-interest, because we all recognize it can be harmful,
we eliminate the very basis of freedom, and instead we install government as
the arbiter of all things. But
governors are just people, who suffer their own failings, shortcomings and
personal agendas. Mankind is
better left to its own devices as much as possible.
Henry David Thoreau noted: That government is best which governs
The Constitution, the
codification of Locke’s ideas, does two things: it allows the government
to act, but equally it allows us to protect ourselves from the very powers
of those who govern if those powers are mishandled or misapplied.
The laws that flow from the Constitution, as well as the separation
of powers, the courts, frequent elections, freedom of speech and press and
assembly, a federal government with enumerated, not unlimited powers, all
mitigate and exert control over the public official who would subjugate or
at least order the citizenry. If
we allow freedom under the force of law, if we do not try to allocate
economic resources—whether labor or capital—by force of that law, then
the system will work because of
that very freedom. If we do
otherwise the system, and the people, will fail.
Most importantly, if we do not understand these relationships through
our own experience and education, we will not value, and defend to the
limit, our freedom.
The natural right to private
property is central to Locke's vision, for private property is the
institution essential to dividing one person's labors from another's. For
Locke, property rights are the counterpoint to (limited) government. Indeed,
people secure in their property rights experience only a minimal need for
government to direct their activities, or the activities of those around
them. (For a complete look at the development of the concept and reality of
property from the very, very beginning, Richard Pipes offers a definitive
assessment in Property and Freedom [Chapter 11].)
Locke's development of the concept of
property takes up much
of his energy, and many of his conclusions are sound
and applicable today. However, some require nuance to fit into a modern
capitalistic economic model that did not exist when Locke wrote.
Understanding property is essential to understanding first principles, yet
property is so basic to humanity's existence few people take the time to
consider its implications or imperatives. Any distance from comprehension of
such a core element of freedom and self-governance makes it difficult, if
not impossible, to fit the whole together.
Concomitant with his equation of
freedom and responsibility, Locke understands the necessity of enforcing our
rights-whether property or personal-and recognizing our obligations to one
another. The Golden Rule may be divine, but it is not self-executing in an
imperfect world; thus Locke's next step, after discussing aspects of our
rights and our responsibilities, is to expand his discussion of the
No law is of value without an ability to enforce it.
Locke severely limits his
executive's unilateral ability to affect the rights and circumstances of
each person, but his executive also has to possess the power necessary to
allow effective fulfillment of the legislature's enactments and the
relationships created thereunder. This essentially delicate balance required
of Locke a somewhat detailed consideration of how an executive should act
and how those actions must be limited.
Fidelity to a rational assessment of
human nature complements Locke's strategy of commencing his investigation of
civil government at the point when human beings were in a state of nature.
The fact that Locke was writing in 1690 when a government such as he
described was only a vision (and historically still a century away) made his
arguments both unique and revolutionary in the face of two millennia of
monarchy and despotism. Watching Locke dissect human nature and human
interaction at their most basic levels offers a comprehension that is
fundamental to understanding most of the subsequent development of freedom
in an ordered society.
Locke, of course, does not operate in a
vacuum. The ideas he formulates are really an amalgam of thoughts and
practices and customs that had been developing throughout the two thousand
years that preceded his efforts. His work reflects history-first of the
Greeks and Romans, then ranging through that of medieval Europeans in both
England and on the Continent, and finally in the British colonies
America. According to author Richard Pipes, Locke's grounding in English
common law was his most important historical resource. Often misunderstood,
English common law was the aftermath of various struggles-as Pipes observes
in Property and Freedom-between rulers and ruled, between church and
state, between sects within religions, and between the well-off and the less
well-off. Over long
periods various traditions had evolved that became the common law.
These helped avoid the necessity of starting with a blank slate each
time a repetitive issue of
governance arose. Such
traditions allowed, as Edmund Burke noted, wisdom to prevail without need
for continued reflection, investigation or argument.
Locke wrote when the law's evolution
had come to accept considerable freedom of thought and action for
Englishmen; thus his amalgam of precedents into a "new" whole was
neither unexpected nor-for everyone but English and continental
monarchs-unwelcome. The law had come to acknowledge governance based upon
the mutual obligations and promises between the governed and the governing
authority; in other words, that governance was contractual in nature.
Breaking the promises encompassed by this contract would, as a matter of
course, require a new governing paradigm. The ability to change the contract
became the key to England's-and eventually America's-quest for sensible,
Russell Kirk's The Roots of American
Order (Chapter 4) offers useful historical insights into what was known
by Locke at the time of his writings. Kirk's overview acquaints readers with
the origins of our modern political arrangements and offers a survey of how
complex their evolution was. Locke's encyclopedic approach to the study of
governance, coupled with his understanding of human nature, make his book
the first among equals; yet none of Locke's work would likely have been
accomplished without all that passed before. Although Locke did not describe
each facet of representative government's "square one" attributes
as they exist today, he came presciently close to crafting an almost
flawless whole. Appreciating how Locke got where he did, described in Kirk's
book, is equally important, for his accomplishment is not as easily
understood without all of its foundations.
About the Author
John Locke was born in 1632 into professional wealth and society. His
education was extensive, as would befit someone occupying his station in
life. Interestingly, he eventually took up the study of medicine in order to
escape entry into the priesthood of the Church of England that his parents
wished for him. Locke's mind was inquisitive and his ultimate avocation,
epistemology, seems almost inevitable. When one considers the times in which
he lived-revolution, counter-revolution, civil war, all as a result of the
willfulness of the monarchy-one can readily comprehend how natural was his
overtly logical, intellectual path. His association with the Earl of
Shaftesbury-a mentor and powerful political figure who weathered almost all
the vicissitudes of seventeenth-century England-not only benefited Locke's
study of human relations but also gave him a living example of political
intrigue and machinations from which to draw persuasive extrapolations
regarding how the English system could be improved. John Locke died in 1704
after long service to the government and fidelity to the philosophical
insights explicated in his writings.
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