Two Treatises of Government
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The Two Treatises of Government is a work of political philosophy published in 1689 by John Locke. The two component treatises are often discussed as separate works, though Locke himself never published them separately. The Second Treatise is often cited as a manifesto for liberal democracy and capitalism, and so has been alternately praised and villified, depending on one's point of view. Locke claims in the Preface to the work that its purpose is to justify William of Orange's ascension to the throne of England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, though recent scholarship has suggested that the bulk of the writing was completed between 1679-1682. That he would write a defense of revolution during the Exclusion Crisis, i.e., during the reign of Charles II, rather than in anticipation of the imminent ouster of James II, serves to cast the work in a very radical light. Locke further edited the Treatises before publication. Books in Seventeenth-century England were dated the same way we date automobile model years, so a date of 1690 on the title page means that a book was published in 1689.
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Structure of the Work
The Two Treatises begin with a Preface announcing Locke's intention. He says that more than half of what he had originally written, occupying a space in between the First and Second Treatises, has been lost and that he will not rewrite it. It is possible that Locke expanded the remaining sections prior to publication to include the more important themes discussed in those that were lost. This, however, is only conjecture and some scholars maintain that we are missing the end of the First Treatise: the final section can be read as breaking off in mid-sentence, or as being poorly punctuated.
Locke had severe problems with the publication process. It has been suggested that he held the printers to a higher standard of perfection than the technology of the time would permit. Be that as it may, the first edition was repleat with errors. The second edition was even worse, and finally printed on cheap paper and sold to the poor. The third edition was much improved, but Locke still was not satisfied. He made corrections to the third edition by hand, but died before a fourth could be published. Peter Laslett's critical edition of the Two Treatises is based upon these hand corrections to the third edition, as is Richard Cox's edition of the Second Treatise. A full story of the Two Treatises’s printing history is contained in the introduction to Laslett's edition (cited below).
The Two Treatises culminate in a defense of resistance to tyranny. This defense is based upon a particular view of legitimate government. This view in turn relies upon there being a natural equality among mankind, which was precisely what was denied by Locke's opponents. He singles out one opponent, Sir Robert Filmer, and begins by assailing him in the First Treatise. He proceeds through Filmer's arguments, contesting his proofs from Scripture and ridiculing them as senseless, until concluding that no government can be justified by appeal to the divine right of kings. While Locke presents the First Treatise as an exercise in groundclearing, especially at the beginning of the Second Treatise, numerous scholars have found much of independent interest there.
The original title of the Second Treatise appears to have been simply "Book II", corresponding to the title of the First Treatise ("Book I"). Before publication, however, Locke gave it greater prominence by (hastily) inserting a separate title page: "An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government." He distinguishes among political power, parental power, and despotical power, and proceeds to discuss how the first might come into being. People are just to oppose attempts at parental or despotical power when these are inappropriate, the implication being that James II forfeited his crown by such an attempt and so that the Glorious Revolution was justified.
First Treatise
The First Treatise is an extended attack on Sir Robert Filmer. Locke approaches the argument along two general lines: he undercuts the Scriptural support that Filmer had adduced for his thesis, and he argues that the acceptance of Filmer's thesis can lead only to absurdity. Locke chose Filmer as his target, he says, because of his reputation and because he "carried this Argument [jure divino] farthest, and is supposed to have brought it to perfection" (1st Tr., §5).
Filmer had argued for a divinely ordained, hereditary, absolute monarchy. Adam possessed unlimitable power over his children as their father, and this authority passed down through the generations. Locke attacks this on several grounds. Accepting that fatherhood grants authority, he argues, it would do so only by the act of begetting, and so cannot be transmitted to one's children. Nor is the power of a father over his children absolute, as Filmer would have it (this is taken up again in the Second Treatise). Finally, whatever power begetting does grant would be shared with the mother. This final argument has drawn contemporary feminists to study the First Treatise.
Filmer had also suggested that Adam's absolute authority came from his ownership over all the world. To this, Locke opposes that the world was originally held in common (both here and in the Second Treatise). But, even if it were not, God's grant to Adam covered only the land and brute animals, not human beings. Nor could Adam, or his heir, leverage this grant to enslave mankind, for the law of nature forbids reducing one's fellows to a state of desperation, if one possesses a sufficient surplus to maintain oneself securely. And even if this charity were not commanded by reason, Locke continues, such a strategy for gaining dominion would prove only that the foundation of government lies in consent.
Throughout the First Treatise, Locke intimates that a doctrine of jure divino will destroy all government. Its final chapter asks the question, "Who heir?" If Filmer is correct, there should be only one rightful king in all the world, viz. the heir of Adam. This would absolve the members of every commonwealth save one of their obligations to their rulers, which could only lead to anarchy if taken seriously. And since we do not know the true heir of Adam, and cannot discover him, all governments are in this position. Filmer must therefore say that men are dutybound to obey their present rulers. Locke states on this point:
I think he is the first Politician, who, pretending to settle Government upon its true Basis, and to establish the Thrones of lawful Princes, ever told the World, That he was properly a King, whose Manner of Government was by Supreme Power, by what Means soever he obtained it; which in plain English is to say, that Regal and Supreme Power is properly and truly his, who can by any Means seize upon it; and if this be, to be properly a King, I wonder how he came to think of, or where he will find, an Usurper. (1st Tr., §79)
Locke concludes the First Treatise by examining the history told in the Bible, and the history of the world since then, and notes that there is no evidence to support Filmer's hypothesis. No king has ever claimed that his authority rested upon his being the heir of Adam. It is Filmer, Locke alleges, that is the innovator in politics, not those who assert the natural equality and freedom of man.
Second Treatise
The Second Treatise is notable for a number of themes that Locke therein develops. It begins with a depiction of the state of nature, wherein individuals are under no obligation to obey another but are each themselves judge of what the law of nature requires. It also covers conquest and slavery, property, representative governemnt, and the right of revolution.
The State of Nature
The work of Thomas Hobbes made theories based upon a state of nature popular in Seventeenth-Century England, even as most of those who employed such arguments were deeply troubled by his absolutist conclusions. Locke's state of nature can best be seen in light of this tradition. Because there is no divinely ordained monarch over all the world, as was argued in the First Treatise, the natural state of mankind is anarchic. In contrast to Hobbes, who posited the state of nature as a hypothetical possibility, Locke is at great pains to show that such a state did indeed exist. Indeed, it exists wherever there is no legitimate government.
While no individual in this state may tell another what to do or authoritatively pronounce justice in a given case, men are not free to do whatever they please. "The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it" (2nd Tr., §7). The specifics of this law are unwritten, however, and so each is likely to misapply it in his own case. Lacking any commonly recognized, impartial judge, there is no way to correct these misapplications. Even were such a judge available, the just are vastly outnumbered by the unjust and indifferent, so his pronouncements would lack effect.
The law of nature is therefore ill enforced in the state of nature.
IF man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom? why will he give up this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and controul of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state of nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others: for all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure. This makes him willing to quit a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and it is not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others, who are already united, or have a mind to unite, for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property. (2nd Tr., §123)
What should be a state of peace very quickly begins to look like the state of war that Hobbes described (though the ill enforcement of the law of nature does not release individuals from their obligation to it, as it does in Hobbes).
It is to avoid the state of war that often occurs in the state of nature that men enter into political society. It is also the state to which men return upon the dissolution of government, i.e., under tyranny.
The Law of Nature
Conquest and Slavery
Property
In the Second Treatise, Locke lays out his philosophy for the creation and mechanics of civil society. A theory of property is central to Locke's understanding of the role of civil government, a main function of which is to protect this property. Locke is concerned with developing a moral justification for individual right to property in the absence of the consent of the people.
Locke's attempt to develop a moral justification for individual ownership of property is in part a reaction to Filmer, who had argued that "the only way out of original communism was to assume that in some way or other every individual in the world had consented to every act of property acquisition". Locke begins by agreeing with Fillmer. He refers to scripture to show that "God as King David says, Psal. CXV. Xvj. Has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common". Locke accepts the premise that men share a right over the world. The problem then is to show that "Men might come to have property ... without any express Compact of all the Commoners." Locke's answer is that "every Man has a Property in his own Person" and "The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (287-288). For Locke, a man may come to be morally justified in his individual ownership of property when "he has mixed his Labour" (288) with it.
It is clear to Locke that individual ownership of property is morally justifiable without the consent of the people. He also argues that it is practical, saying that if common consent were necessary, "Children or Servants could not cut the Meat which their Father and Master had provided for them in common, without assigning every one his peculiar part" (289). Therefore, individual ownership of property is established as both morally justifiable and practical.
Represenative Government
The Right of Revolution
Controversies Regarding Interpretation
Selected Secondary Literature
- Richard Ashcraft. Revolutionary Politics and Locke's "Two Treatises of Government". Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
- Richard Ashcraft. Locke's Two Treatises of Government. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1987.
- John Dunn. The Political Thought of John Locke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
- Peter Laslett. Introduction to Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke. Student Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- C. B. MacPherson. Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
- Thomas L. Pangle. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
- Leo Strauss. Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.
- Jeremy Waldron. God, Locke, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Michael P. Zuckert. Natural Rights and the New Republicanism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
- Michael P. Zucker. Launching Liberalism. University Press of Kansas, 2002.
External links
- etext of the Second Treatise (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7370) (Project Gutenberg)
- Full text of the Second Treatise (http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm)
- Sparknotes on the Second Treatise (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/locke/)
