论约翰洛克的财产-英文

CORE11-120 Lecture Week Eight

Locke on Natural Rights the Legitimacy of Government

1.Today we take a look at the political philosophy of Hobbes’ most important successor:

the English philosopher John Lock (1632-1704). John Locke is widely regarded as the greatest of all English philosophers. He did important work in epistemology (the study of knowledge), metaphysics and philosophy of language as well as political philosophy. He wrote two philosophical masterpieces: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) and Two Treatises on Government (published anonymously, also in 1689). The lecture today examines some of the main themes from the second (and more significant) of the Two Treatises of Government.

2.Locke makes for a fascinating contrast with Hobbes. The Second Treatise is often

interpreted as an attempted refutation of Hobbes’s Leviathan, however Locke and Hobbes also share common ground. Like Hobbes, Locke thinks that the legitimacy of government is based on a tacit or implied social contract. Like Hobbes, he also sees the social contract as a rational response to deficiencies within the state of nature. On many important details, however, Hobbes and Locke disagree.

3.Let us start with Locke’s characterization of the state of nature. Recall th at Hobbes

thought that the state of nature would be a state of war of all against all. Locke’s

view of the state of nature is much less dire. The reason for this is that Locke

considered humans to be naturally moral beings. We do not always or automatically act well, but we all have the capacity to understand what it is to act well. Humans have a moral conscience, and would have a conscience even in the state of nature.

Hobbes, by contrast, thought that our moral character is derived from civil society.

He thinks that decency and virtue are achievements of civilization, not features of unadorned human nature. According to Locke, however, we not only have a

conscience in the state of nature, we also have rights. Locke famously asserts the

existence of natural rights, and with them, natural law.

4.By natural law, Locke means just what Aquinas meant: it is a prescription of the way

we ought to act, which reflects God’s authority over us, and is something that we can discover for ourselves just because we are human and rational. This differs from

what Hobbes thought of as “Laws of Nature”: Hobbes’s laws of nature are rational principles of prudence (e.g. seek peace) and rational consistency (honour covenants).

Although Locke and Aquinas share a belief in natural law, they nonetheless had a different ideas about what is involved natural law. Recall that Aquinas says that

natural law enjoins us to seek good and avoid evil (and do so in ways that respect the fundamental goods of life, procreation, society, knowledge, etc.). According to

Locke, by contrast, natural law enjoins us to respect others’ natural rights. Locke

argues that we are everywhere and always in possession of these rights – rights that we possess naturally, simply in virtue of our humanity, and not in virtue of our

belonging to a particular society, or class, or club. This is the idea that would

eventually develop into the contemporary conception of human rights.