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Unit 7: John Locke

7.3 Locke’s Political Theory Notes

The First Treatise was a critique of Filmer’s theory, while the Second Treatise explained the “true
original extent and end of civil government”. Filmer and not Hobbes was the main antagonist of
Locke (Laslett 1960: 60). Nor was Locke presenting a disguised and moderate version of Hobbes,
as alleged by some of the late seventeenth-century audiences.
Locke adopted the technique of social contract to explain that legitimate political authority was
derived from the consent of its people, which could be withdrawn when the freedom of the
individual was violated or curtailed. The Two Treatises espoused and defended freedom, consent
and property as cardinal principles of legitimate political power, which was defined as:
... the Right of making laws with penalties of Death and consequently all less Penalties,
for Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of employing the force of the
Community, in the Execution of such Laws and in the defence of the Commonwealth
from Foreign Inquiry and all this only for the Public Good (Locke 1960: 308).
Locke saw political power as a trust, with the general community specifying its purposes and
aims. He rejected Filmer’s claims of absolutism and patriarchism.

Freedom and Rights
The origins of the notion of rights can be traced to late medieval thought and the natural rights
tradition to the natural law doctrine in Greek philosophy. In the twelfth century, the concept of
rights emerged in European thought and was fully developed by the end of the fourteenth century
into a coherent theoretical construct. The Italian philosopher and theologian, Aquinas for whom
there existed God-given natural law as an underlying force in the universe stressed on moral
duties than rights of individual citizens. Nonetheless, this formed the theoretical background for
the emergence of the theories of natural law after fourteenth century, associated with the gradual
development of modern secular territorial state.
Individual rights had no meaning in the feudal system which had a complex power structure with
the different parts—the vassal, lord and king balancing one another. This delicate but enduring
social balance was challenged by the assertion of an absolute divine right of the kings by James I
in England in 1610. The promulgation of the doctrine of divine right led to the rise of the contract
theory that paved the way for the emergence of a limited constitutional state followed by declaration
of rights, the Bill of Rights of 1688, thus drawing out a new relationship between the state and the
individual. By the end of the seventeenth century, the resistance to the capitalist developments
had ceased to exist thus setting into motion, a process that witnessed economic and technical
progress, rise of private enterprise and commercialization of agriculture culminating in the Industrial
Revolution. It was in England that the concepts of individual rights, constitutional government,
political democracy and the Industrial Revolution crystallized and developed.
Locke rejected the idea of divine right of kings and natural arrangement of political authority and
advanced the notion of human equality. His theory rested on a firm and explicit moral relationship
between the individual and God. Since life was a gift that God had given as a basic moral law of
nature no one had the right to kill himself or destroy, rob or enslave others, as all were equal
before God. The natural condition was one of freedom and equality regulated by the laws of
nature.
The state of nature was not one of licence, for though the individual was free from any superior
power, he was subject to the laws of nature. From the laws of nature, individuals derived the
natural rights to life, liberty and estate (collectively called property). The laws of nature were
known to human beings through the power of reason, which directed them towards their “proper
interests”. Liberty, for Locke, was not the freedom to do what one chose, but to act within the
bounds of the laws of nature. Freedom presupposed order and was possible only within a

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