Page 121 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Unit 7: John Locke

us, that may Authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s Notes
uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for Ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve
himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason when his own
preservation comes not in competition ought be, as much as he can, to preserve the rest
of mankind and may not unless it be to do Justice on an offender, take away, or impair
the life or what tends to the Preservation of the Life, the Liberty, Health, Limb or
Goods of another.
Locke saw this shared duty to God to preserve one’s self as part of God’s creation as the basic
moral law of nature, which existed in the pre-political order or the state of nature. He tried to
show that political power could be understood only if it was derived from a state in which all
individuals were perfectly free to do, both with regard to their person and possessions, what they
thought fit within the bounds of the laws of nature. Locke was emphatic that God had made
everything for subsistence and not for waste. Even an individual’s life was not his own, but was
given by God as a trust, meaning we had no right to destroy or kill ourselves nor could we
destroy, kill, rob or enslave other beings who were equal to us before God.
Political authority, like all moral claims, for Locke, was ultimately based on religious obligations,
which were the source of all morality. His arguments were politically radical, but far from being
secular (Hampsher-Monk 1992: 82). Unlike Hobbes, who argued for an unlimited right of nature
that each individual could claim, Locke stressed on a natural duty of self-preservation owed to
God for having created us. This duty ruled out strife, for not only did we need to preserve
ourselves, but we also needed to perceive the fact that we were all equal before God. The state of
nature was therefore moral. Political authority for Locke was not mere power, but power with right.
A right could only originate from an already existing right, and because individuals had no right
to give away their duty to preserve themselves they could not therefore morally or logically grant
rightful power to an absolute authority. Locke viewed absolute political power as illegitimate,
dismissing Filmer’s arguments as wrong and wicked, for it was tantamount to giving up to
another a right which one did not have in the first place. There was just the relationship between
God and human beings. All human authority and relationships were based on trust.
The compulsion to constitute a civil society was to protect and preserve freedom and to enlarge it.
The state of nature was one of liberty and equality, but it was also one where peace was not secure,
being constantly upset by the “corruption and viciousness of degenerate men”. It lacked three
important wants: the want of an established, settled, known law; the want of a known and
indifferent judge; and the want of an executive power to enforce just decisions. Through the state
of nature, Locke tried to tell us the meaning and importance of authority, namely that human
beings came together to ensure the observance of the laws of nature, to guarantee the greater
possibility of impartiality in the implementation and execution of rules that governed common
life, and thereby increase the chance of peace that impartiality entailed. Locke’s observation in the
beginning all the World was America’ was about the formation of government in the background
of people living together according to reason, without common superior on earth, in mutual
assistance, peace, goodwill and preservation. It tells us what government is and what it does by
showing what it is not and what it does not do.
Locke brought out the perils of human partiality, and how absolute power made partiality
potentially dangerous. Flattery and servility would only make it worse. He recognized the
tremendous potentiality of power for making human life better, but feared that it had to be
entrusted only to those who were responsible towards those on whom it was exercised. Most
societies were based on force rather than right. Locke was not an anarchist, distrusting political
authority, but he was conscious of the dangers that it posed. Political authority was a trust, and if
the terms of the trust were violated, the community had the right to take remedial measures in
order to preserve itself. It was on these grounds that he objected to Hobbes’ argument that only

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 115