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The Law of Nature in Locke's Second Treatise: Is Locke a Hobbesian?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Patrick Coby
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Extract

The question addressed by this essay is whether Thomas Hobbes is the true intellectual forebear of John Locke. A brief comparison of the teachings of these two authors with respect to natural justice and civil justice would seem to suggest that Locke is a determined adversary of Hobbes whose views on justice are reducible to the maxim that “might makes right.” But a reexamination of Locke's Second Treatise shows that Locke adopts this principle with hardly less thoroughness than Hobbes. Even so, an important difference remains, for Locke takes steps to disguise the grim reality of power, whereas Hobbes makes the enlightenment of people the sine qua non of his political science. Locke's departure from Hobbes is seen as an attempt to instill in the body politic a degree of justice that would not otherwise exist.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , Winter 1987 , pp. 3 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

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References

Notes

1 This article is a revised and condensed version of a paper presented at the 1985 American Political Science Convention; the original contained a lengthy discussion of the differences between Hobbes and Locke.

2 Gough, J. W., John Locke's Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Leyden, W. von, Introduction, Essays on the Law of Nature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954)Google Scholar; Plamenatz, John, Man and Society, vol. 1 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).Google Scholar

3 Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dunn could also be included in the above list, e.g., ibid., p. 164, and “Justice and Locke's Political Theory,” Political Studies 16 (February 1968): 71; Tully, James, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seliger, Martin, The Liberal Politics of John Locke (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969).Google Scholar

4 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Cox, Richard, Locke on War and Peace (Washington: University Press of America, 1982)Google Scholar; Goldwin, Robert, “John Locke,” in History of Political Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972), pp. 451–86.Google Scholar

5 Locke, quotations are from Two Treatises of Government, rev. ed., ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: New American Library, 1963)Google Scholar. Unless otherwise stated, section citations refer to the Second Treatise. Hobbes, quotations are from The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. SirMolesworth, William (London: John Bohn, 1839–1845)Google Scholar, vol. 2, Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and Society (but referred to by its more familiar title, De Cive), vol. 3, Leviathan, and vol. 4, Elements of Law (also known as De Corpore Politico).

6 Locke never actually says that legislative supremacy is a natural law, but he clearly implies as much. A similar inference would not be warranted in the case of separation of powers, however, since Locke says that “well order'd Commonwealths” divide legislative and executive power, not that all commonwealths do (sees. 143, 159).

7 Locke does not directly explain what a just war is. He takes it for granted that combat can be either just or unjust and proceeds to consider those powers that fall to a “Conquerour in a Lawful War” (sec. 177.) Cox, however, pieces together a just war theory using both Treatises and A Letter Concerning Toleration. War is unjust, says Cox, if it is fought for the personal glory of the ruler, if its purpose is imperialistic subjugation of another people, or if it is undertaken in the service of religious belief (War and Peace, pp. 154–56).Google Scholar

8 Windstrup, George, “Locke on Suicide,” Political Theory 8 (05 1980): 169.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

9 Lemos, Ramon, Hobbes and Locke: Power and Consent (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar

10 In fact nearly all of what Locke calls natural law he also terms natural right. A ready explanation for Locke's seemingly indiscriminate manner is the supposition that every right implies an obligation — one person's entitlement is another person's duty. But this explanation does not hold in the case of self-preservation because the obligatory side of the coin is comprehended under a separate law of nature, the preservation of mankind. Self-preservation is not like care of offspring where the right of the child is simultaneously the duty of the parent.

11 See Cox, , War and Peace, pp. 85–89Google Scholar; Macpherson, C. B., “Natural Rights in Hobbes and Locke,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, ed. Raphael, D. B. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), p. 7Google Scholar. Cf. Tully, , A Discourse on Property, pp. 46–47Google Scholar. Tully offers a teleological explanation of man's desires — man seeks his preservation because God designed him that way. Tully goes on to say that the second law of nature depends entirely on this interpretation: “If, on the other hand, preservation were nothing more than the subjective goal consequent upon an individual's desire for self-preservation, no Lockeian moral theory would be possible. It would be impossible to generate the positive duty of preserving others and to discover a natural criterion of justice which could be used to define and delimit legitimate acts of self-preservation” (p. 47).Google Scholar

12 Aquinas makes self-preservation a natural law, but he places it at the lower end of a hierarchy of natural instincts. Self-preservation is an animal desire. Reason affirms the goodness of this desire, but reason does not produce it. So regarded, self-preservation fails to meet Locke's definition of natural law which is a discovery of reason (Summa Theologica I–II, Q. 94, A. 2).

13 Goldwin, Robert, “Locke's State of Nature in Political Science,” Western Political Quarterly 29 (03 1976): 128–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Dunn has recourse to this explanation, claiming that Locke “did not suppose that a man has a right to do anything which he has a power to do. Indeed the entire Two Treatises is specifically concerned to refute such a position …” (Political Thought, pp. 108–09 n. 5Google Scholar). Dunn accounts for the exception by supposing that a slave is not a moral agent and thus not responsible for anything he might do (pp. 108–10). But could it be Locke's considered opinion, the surface arguments of the Second Treatise notwithstanding, that a human being destroys his moral intelligence, becomes in effect an animal, for having once broken some precept of natural law? Dunn himself says otherwise (p. 107). See Wind-strup, , “Locke on Suicide,” pp. 172–73.Google Scholar

15 At numerous other points in the Second Treatise, Locke uses power as a synonym for right (secs. 7, 11, 65, 87, 128, 149, 171, 184). See Seliger, , Liberal Politics, p. 131.Google Scholar

16 Seven times in section 23 Locke repeats the word power; never does he use the word right. Concerning the master and his slave, Locke once says, “when he has him in his Power.” Power would seem here to mean force, but the larger context is still that of rightful force.

17 Cf. Glenn, Gary, “Inalienable Rights and Locke's Argument for Limited Government: Political Implications of a Right to Suicide,” Journal of Politics 46 (02 1984): 84–86CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Glenn seems to argue that suicide is not self-destruction, but self-destruction where there is the right (duty) of self-preservation. Having lost the right of self-preservation, the slave can kill himself without committing suicide. Were it not for this too-subde technicality, Glenn would be admitting that suicide is a right of the slave.

18 Laslett, (Two Treatises, p. 325Google Scholar, n. sec. 23) believes Locke to be inconsistent but offers no comment or explanation.

19 Day, J. P., “Locke on Property,” in Life, Liberty, and Property: Essays on Locke's Political Ideas, ed. Schochet, Gordon (Belmont, California: Wadsworth, 1971), p. 117Google Scholar; also Devine, Francis, “Absolute Democracy of Indefeasible Right: Hobbes Versus Locke,” Journal of Politics 37 (08 1975): 762 n. 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Locke seems to distinguish in section 6 between person and life (“though Man in that State have an uncontroleable Liberty to dispose of his Person or Possessions, yet he has not Liberty to destroy himself”); but this distinction does not really hold. See note 21.

20 Cf. Tully, , A Discourse on Property, pp. 108–109Google Scholar. Tully admits no connection between ownership of one's person and ownership of one's body. But if man has no property in his body, why would he have property in the labor of his body? It might be argued in reply that man's body is like the natural world — created and owned by God but utilized by man. However, Locke says that man's use of nature gives him tide to it; thus it follows that use of the body includes title to the body as well. Now if one responds that man's title is relative to other men but not to God (“This no Body has any Right to but himself” [sec. 27]), still a second problem arises: in order to establish man's right to appropriate privately from the common store, Locke must assert that the materials of nature are nearly worthless, 1/1000 part of value; hence God's creation of the human body is similarly worthless until put to good use by man. According to this calculus man would have title even relative to God since man and not God is the true creator of value.

Tully suggests that life is an inalienable right because man's life is not his to alienate; it is God's (p. 114). But life is alienable — man may take his life “where some nobler use, than its bare Preservation calls for it” (sec. 6), and society may take his life where the preservation of society is at stake, as in times of war (sec. 139).

21 In two additional passages Locke states again the independence and self-possession of man: “… yet Man (by being Master of himself, and Proprietor of his own Person …” (sec. 44), and “… A Right of Freedom to his Person, which no other Man has a Power over, but the free Disposal of it lies in himself” (sec. 190).

The word disposal (or a variant) shows up again in section 6 where it seems not to imply an individual's complete command over himself: “… though Man in that State have an uncontroleable Liberty, to dispose of his Person or Possessions, yet he has not Liberty to destroy himself …” Locke distinguishes freedom and property from preservation, saying that man is master of the former but not of the latter. However, Locke elsewhere asserts that liberty is the indispensable means of preservation (sec. 17) and that property is similarly vital (sec. 27). If man has- an “uncontrolleable liberty, to dispose of his Person or Possessions,” and if personal freedom and property are essential to man's preservation, then it would seem to follow that man also has an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his life.

22 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, pp. 224–31Google Scholar; and Cox, , War and Peace, pp. 81–94.Google Scholar

23 For a clear and instructive discussion of the state of nature/state of war question, see Goldwin, , “John Locke,” pp. 454–56.Google Scholar

24 See Goldwin (ibid., p. 465): “… if there is a scarcity of perishable provisions in the original state, there cannot be natural property.” Rousseau's state of nature degenerates into a state of war at the point where people begin quarreling about the source of property rights — whether it is self-preservation that confers this right, or labor, or first occupancy, or the needs of the greater number. (The First and Second Discourse of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Masters, Roger D. [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964], pp 158–59.)Google Scholar

25 Cf. Laslett, , Introduction, pp. 122–35Google Scholar. Laslett develops what he calls the “Lockeian doctrine of natural political virtue” (p. 111)Google Scholar which views the exercise of the executive power as essentially altruistic. But Laslett is aware that his interpretation runs somewhat afoul of a second argument in Locke that emphasizes power and willfulness (p. 130). Cf. Dunn, , Political Thought, p. 127.Google Scholar

26 Lest there be confusion here, nature is potentially wealthy, but actual wealth depends on human labor; and in the absence of human labor nature is penurious.

27 Goldwin, , “John Locke,” p. 466Google Scholar. Lemos tries to improve on Locke in a way that avoids this problem (Hobbes and Locke, p. 146).Google Scholar

28 Plamenatz, , Man and Society, p. 243.Google Scholar

29 That Locke is a proto-capitalist is the thesis of Macpherson and Strauss. Macpherson, , The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 208 ff.Google Scholar; Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 246Google Scholar. See also Cox, , “Justice as the Basis of Political Order in Locke,” in Nomos VI:Justice, pp. 254–61Google Scholar. Cf. Laslett, , Introduction, p. 119.Google Scholar

30 Once in force, however, these institutions take on a higher purpose. See below.

31 Cf. Gough, , Locke's Political Philosophy, p. 32Google Scholar. Gough is uncertain about the extent of the surrender, citing section 99 where Locke says that man surrenders “all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into Society …” (See also sec. 129). But what is necessary on any given occasion is determined by the majority, to whose decisions the individual is absolutely bound (sec. 97).

32 Cf. Dunn, , Political Thought, pp. 127–29.Google Scholar

33 Kendall, Wilmoore, John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 68.Google Scholar

34 See Glenn, (“Inalienable Rights,” pp. 90–102)Google Scholar for an argument that rights are inalienable.

35 In A Letter Concerning Toleration (Tully, James, editor, [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983]) Locke makes an exception for liberty of conscience, suggesting on three occasions that it is an inalienable right (pp. 26, 48, 55) (that it is a natural right he says explicitly [p. 51]). But he later implies that this liberty is inalienable in a Hobbesian sense, i.e., the individual is entitled to exercise it, but if its doctrines are injurious to the public good, the society is also entitled to suppress it (pp. 49–51). Thus there ensues a contest of rights with the stronger prevailing.Google Scholar

36 Kendall, , Majority-Rule, pp. 103, 112–19Google Scholar; also Lemos, , Hobbes and Locke, p. 124.Google Scholar

37 This is not to say that revolutionaries are right because they prevail, only that because they prevail, they have a right, at least one that is effective. If they do not prevail, they may still have a right, but this right avails them little as they are marched to the scaffold or left languishing in prison. See Seliger, , Liberal Politics, pp. 135–38Google Scholar. On one occasion, however, Locke does suggest that a right may be effective even when disjoined from power. He says that “the best fence against Rebellion” is the right of the people to form a new legislature, for when publicly affirmed it can work to deter government from the abuse of its power (sec. 226). If the government practices self-restraint (either out of fear of a multitude made resolute by the doctrine of natural right, or persuaded itself of the injustice of absolute power), then there will be no test of strength and no proving the effectiveness of the right of revolution.

38 This seems to be Strauss's understanding (Natural Right and History, p. 231).Google Scholar

39 Because those original intentions — life, liberty, and property — are not merely agreed on, but determined by natural law, it is appropriate to say that Locke is not a strict contractarian. See Riley, Patrick, Will and Political Legitimacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 63–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 This expression actually belongs to Michael Oakeshott (Introduction, Leviathan [Oxford: Basil Blackwell], p. lix).Google Scholar

41 Gough, , Locke's Political Philosophy, pp. 154–92Google Scholar; Laslett, Introduction, pp. 126–35; Dunn, , Political Thought, p. 162.Google Scholar

42 See Kraynak, Robert, “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration” American Political Science Review 74 (03 1980): 61. Kraynak suggests that Locke came round to a position of toleration in part because he concluded that the pride men take in their opinions is a major source of their human dignity. Lockean man, says Kraynak, is a “partial” animal, which means that he is less than the rational animal of Aristotle but more than the vainglorious animal of Hobbes.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Kendall, , Majority-Rule, p. 134.Google Scholar

44 Cf. Rousseau, , Second Discourse, p. 161Google Scholar. See Gildin, Hilail (Rousseau's Social Contract: The Design of the Argument [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], p. 47)Google Scholar who thinks that Rousseau and Locke are in essential agreement on this point.

45 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 214.Google Scholar

46 Cf. Macpherson, (“Natural Rights,” p. 10)Google Scholar who implies that Locke is unaware of what he is doing, that he denies natural law (except for Hobbesian natural law) and yet affirms it in order to limit the powers of government.

47 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, pp. 206–209Google Scholar. Cf. Seliger, , Liberal Politics, p. 36Google Scholar. Seliger disputes Strauss's thesis on grounds that the right of revolution, which Locke brazenly proclaims, was more dangerous and offensive than any of its theoretical underpinnings. But Locke could hardly have concealed what he was most concerned to teach, that people have a right to overthrow their government. Still this teaching would have gone unheeded if it was apparent to all that Locke's intellectual forebear was Hobbes. As for Locke's personal safety, the Two Treatises of Government was not published until after the issue had been settled and thus at a time when revolution was an acceptable and popular notion. Although the threat of counterrevolution did persist, throughout the period (the 1690's) Locke steadfastly refused to admit his authorship, doing so only on the last possible occasion — as a codicil to his will. See Cox, , War and Peace, pp. 1–44Google Scholar; also Dunn, , “Justice and Locke's Political Theory,” p. 70 n. 1.Google Scholar

48 Locke does say, as noted above, that “Truth and keeping of Faith belongs to Men, as Men, and not as Members of Society.” In light of the examples he adduces to confirm this claim (see Cox, , War and Peace, pp. 94–105Google Scholar), I understand him to mean that the capacities for truthtelling and trustworthiness are natural to men but that their realization depends mostly on society.

49 Strauss, , Natural Right and History, p. 198.Google Scholar

50 Laslett explains in detail how incredibly cautious a man Locke was (Introduction, pp. 58–79; especially pp. 77–79). But Laslett does not draw the conclusion that Locke's caution might have affected his writing. And when Strauss comes to this conclusion independently, Laslett dismisses it out of hand (p. 119, n. 21). See Kendall, , “John Locke Revisited,” The Intercollegiate Review 2 (01–02 1966): 230–34Google Scholar. Kendall has the distinction of being the only Locke scholar to have changed his mind.

51 I think that Glenn comes to a similar conclusion, although what he regards as genuine in Locke is the exact opposite of my own position. Glenn wants to know why Locke never uses the expression “inalienable rights,” and he argues that Locke deliberately softens his claims for the absoluteness of rights so as to make them compatible with stable government (“Inalienable Rights,” p. 102Google Scholar). Believing that the weight of the evidence is on the side of Locke's Hobbesianism, I argue, on the contrary, that Locke deliberately disguises the absoluteness of government in order to make its power compatible with individual rights. Glenn is not concerned with Locke's relation to Hobbes, but it is interesting that when he asks the question of whether rights exist which cannot be surrendered, his answer is strictly Hobbesian (De Give VI. 13Google Scholar) — by consent, says Glenn, the individual gives full power to the government to take his life but nonetheless retains the right to defend himself (pp. 97–102).