FREE ESSAY ON JOHN LOCKE

JOHN LOCKE

John Locke (1632-1704) was an English philosopher, political theorist and founder of
Empiricism. After studying medicine at Oxford, Locke served the Earl of Shaftesbury as a
physician, and followed him to France in 1675. There he spent four years studying
Continental philosophy, especially that of Descartes. On his return, Locke worked with
Shaftesbury to block the succession of James, Duke of York, and later James II from the
throne. It was a controversial issue since the Restoration of tabula rasa.
His most important political work also appeared in 1690, the Two Treatises of Government
there he argues that the function of the state is to protect the natural rights of its
citizens, primarily to protect the right to property. I think John Locke is a father of
Democracy. John Locke came up with ideas that we follow today. It is good to think John
Locke is a father of democracy.
John Locke embraced many of ideas in his theories on the state of nature and the rise of
government and society. Thomas Hobbes also presented these ideas. They differed however,
in that Locke believed that god was the prime factor in politics. He believed that
individuals were born with certain natural rights given not by government or society, but
by God. This he said is what gives all people equality. Before I show Locke's state of
nature, it is helpful to talk about other key points, mainly property rights and the
invention of money.
Besides the right to self-preservation, Locke also believed that all individuals had a
natural right to property. This natural right carried with it two preconditions of
natural law. First, since God gave the earth to all individuals, people must be sure to
leave enough property for others to have, and secondly nothing may be allowed to spoil.
These conditions met, an individual was granted exclusive rights to any object that they
mixed their labor with. For Locke, mixing labor was in effect placing a part of the self
into an object, and thereby making it part of the individual and therefore their
property.
Human nature being the way it is, people eventually found a way around the natural law
restrictions on property accumulation through the creation of money. Instead of only
being allowed to accumulate as much property as could be used with out spoilage, people
created money as a means around the natural law. Since money does not spoil, the burden
of upholding the law now became that of the consumer rather than of the producer. People
were granted the ability to accumulate unlimited money based upon their industriousness.
This meant that some people acted more rationally than others, and thus were more
deserving of property. Locke also argued that when people agreed to start using money,
they also agreed to the "disproportionate and unequal possession of the Earth." He
believed that people would be free to sell their labor to one another in exchange for
money. When this happened, any property the laborer produced became the property of the
buyer. For Locke the state of nature was still a horrible place, but God's law was
created moral imperatives preventing humans from partaking in the total free for all that
Thomas Hobbes describes. People left the state of nature, according to Locke, not out of
fear of violent death, but as a matter of convenience and in order to protect their
property. They did not give all of their rights to an absolute authoritarian government.
Instead, they formed two distinctively separate agreements: the contract of society and
the contract of the majority of society and government or "trustee relationship" as it is
often referred to.
The contract of society took place when people gave up the total freedom that they
enjoyed in the state of nature to form society. This society was made up of two types of
people: Property and non-property owners. Property owners being rational individuals were
given the right of suffrage, while non-property owners, viewed as not being industrious,
were not. Property owners were further said to be of civil society while non-property
owners were only considered to be in but not of society. In order to fulfill the contract
of the majority of society and government, the society as a whole contracts an impartial
third party to act as the government. This agreement is often referred to as a trustee
relationship because the government has no rights, only responsibilities to the people,
and therefore acts only in the best interest of the members of the society. The
government is given its power to act by the property-owning portion of the population,
not by the society as a whole.
Another point that makes Locke's theory different is that society has the power to
overthrow the government. Since a majority created it, they have the power to remove it.
According to Hobbes's theory, the Leviathan won't be overthrown because of the great fear
of returning to the state of nature. This coupled with the fact that the government holds
absolute power over the people, and its only check against itself. Locke on the other
hand stated that society could overthrow the government without returning to the state of
nature because the social contract would still be in effect. All that was needed would be
for the society to elect another government, by majority rule, to replace the old one.
This introduces the idea that government should be accountable to the people. As we can
see from the above themes, Locke was in favor of a limited government, not an
authoritarian one like Hobbes described.
Although Hobbes and Locke differed in their theories on government and society, the one
thing that they did have in common was their view of the importance and autonomy of the
individual in society. The extent to which this was true varies but the one important
fact remains. The people existed as individuals before societies and governments came
into being. They each possessed certain rights, and all had the freedom to do as they
pleased. This was unrestrained according to Hobbes, and with some restrictions placed
upon them by God according to Locke. This freedom of the individual was important, for it
was the foundation for modern liberal democracy. John Locke's influence on the philosophy
and political thought of the eighteenth century was without rival. His two Treatises of
Government was advocating the removal of a ruler who fails to live up to his end of the
social contract. It made him an important figure among the intellectuals of the American
war of independence. With all the things that Locke did, it is easy to say he had an
influence on the American democracy. The United States government in my opinion is based
on the beliefs of John Locke.