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Unit 7: John Locke

of tolerance, government by consent and realization of human freedom in its economic and political Notes
contexts, found concrete expression with the discovery of the American continent, as exemplified
by his statement right at the outset of the book that the world in the beginning was like America.
It is also interesting to note that the libertarian philosophy characterized by optimism and abundance
was made possible as a result of the discovery of America. Prior to Locke, political theorists from
Plato and Hobbes were confronted with the problem of scarcity. The discovery of America
symbolized human emancipation, making it possible to conceive of a society of plenty, freedom
and order.
No political thinker had influenced political theorizing on two different countries in two different
continents as Locke did. He was the guiding and spiritual father of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment period, particularly for philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire. He was
acknowledged as the founder of modern empiricism with Hume, Berkeley, J.S. Mill, Russell and
Ayer as its exponents. He was also the inspiration for early feminists like Mary Astell (1666–1708),
Lady Cudworth Masham (1658–1708), Catherine Totter Cockburn (1769–1849), Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu (1689–1762), Catherine Macaulay Sawbridge Graham (1731–1791) and Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759–1797). These feminists accepted Locke’s belief in the supremacy of reason, rejection of
patriarchy and political absolutism, and in the importance of nurture as opposed to nature. Locke’s
view of labour as a source of value and entitlement was the framework within which the Classical
economists present their case for capitalist appropriation. Paradoxically, the same theory was
used by Marx to argue against capitalism and propose a socialist alternative. Thus Locke’s “thought
provided for the eighteenth century a metaphysics and a theory of education, theology, morals
and politics that meshed well with the rising tide of individualism, utilitarianism and capitalism”.
Locke was soundly convinced that a society which practised toleration in intellectual and religious
matters was the most desirable order that humankind aspired to achieve. His visit to Holland in
1683 reaffirmed this belief. He desired for England a society where citizens could enjoy the liberty
and opportunity of free enquiry. He liberated modern thought from the tutelage of Scholasticism,
earning him credit as the father of the Enlightenment.
Locke was evasive about his authorship of the Two Treatises and, he published these texts
anonymously. The only time that he acknowledged it (and that too indirectly), was in 1704 when
he wrote a codicil to his will naming the Two Treatises among his several other anonymous works
for the benefit of the Bodleian library. On another occasion (in 1703), he recommended the books
along with Aristotle’s Politics and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity to a distant cousin.
There is considerable controversy regarding the time period and the intent of the two texts. The
book was published two years after the successful completion of the Glorious Revolution of 1688,
the deposition of the Catholic King James II and the accession of Protestant King William and
Queen Mary to the English throne. The Revolution marked the beginnings of limited constitutional
monarchy and parliamentary supremacy, preparing the way for the emergence of a representative
democratic system. Though the realization of mass democracy, with the principle of one man one
vote, came about in the first quarter of twentieth century in Great Britain, the significance of the
Glorious Revolution and Locke’s Second Treatise was because it stated clearly the importance of
constitutionalism, limited state power and individual rights.
Locke was interpreted as a collectivist, because of his insistence that the community would be
ruled by the will of the majority. He was seen as a champion of individuality. He was the
spokesperson of the liberal constitutional order, criticizing Wolin’s portrayal of the philosopher
for providing an intellectual defence of the sublimation of the political to the social dimension of
life (Pateman 1975: 443, 458–462). He was depicted as an enemy of patriarchism, preparing the
grounds for women’s equal rights.

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