John Locke is a hard rocking motherfucker.
I just finished the Two Treatises the other day, and I was really blown away. It's been a while since I've sat down with Locke, and I walked away seeing a much different political philosopher this time around.
First things first, Locke is NOT all about property. I cannot give you the page cite here (but if you're really anal, let me know and I will), but Locke carefully defines property as "Life, Liberty, and Estate." So, sure, every famous quotation centers all over property - but the concept is *huge* in his political thinking.
Of course, what Locke *is* all about is freedom and limited government. It's pretty inspiring stuff. I certainly lack the capacity to boil down Locke into a cute paragraph or two. However, I really admire his understanding of human beings as free, ratioanl creatures that cannot be dominated by any other human being.
Sure, Locke has some fucked up issues. The biggest being perhaps that his whole argument hinges on the Natural Law of Reason. Only, I'm not quite sure what the hell that is, in his own terms. This is key, since if I violate Natural Law, I put myself in the State of War vis-a-vis others and THEN can have my rights stripped. Hence, all there is a tremendous power located in the definition of this concept, and Locke does precious little to tease out what that means. (But that's why we have Kant I suppose...)
What really grabbed me about Locke this time around was that his theory is based, in a lot of ways, on natural history. Sure, Locke's "anthropological" story about a bunch of families in the State of Nature giviing Consent to form Government is a bunch of hooey. But it reflects how Locke is an early Enlightenment thinker: he does not just POSIT what the state should be, he builds an argument based off of human "nature" and "scientific" investigation. Locke is not just asserting a moral claim; he's trying to *figure out* an ideal moral standing.
It makes me wonder things: If I could talk to John-Boy today, and show him that sometimes economics could be used to force "consent," what would he say? If I could argue that people lack the ability to just leave their "commonwealth" due to their "encumbered" nature of social life, how would that alter his means for changing the state? If I could highlight the effects of hegemonic discourse, would he better prepare citizens for freedom rather than just assuming rebellion would happen when the Legislature violated its trust? What is exciting about Locke is that it doesn't have to be dogmatic.
In a lot of ways, there are a number of keen social theory insights in the text, especially regarding the persistence of habit, which is impressive giviin the age of the text (going on 350 years or so). Sure, he gets some stuff wrong and overstates his case and has some sloppy definitions. But, especially given his context, his endorsement of *liberty* is still breathtaking. I don't know that there are many thinkers ever, and certainly not in the contemporary world, that are quite as *revolutionary.* I'm all emotional over my Locke.
I just finished the Two Treatises the other day, and I was really blown away. It's been a while since I've sat down with Locke, and I walked away seeing a much different political philosopher this time around.
First things first, Locke is NOT all about property. I cannot give you the page cite here (but if you're really anal, let me know and I will), but Locke carefully defines property as "Life, Liberty, and Estate." So, sure, every famous quotation centers all over property - but the concept is *huge* in his political thinking.
Of course, what Locke *is* all about is freedom and limited government. It's pretty inspiring stuff. I certainly lack the capacity to boil down Locke into a cute paragraph or two. However, I really admire his understanding of human beings as free, ratioanl creatures that cannot be dominated by any other human being.
Sure, Locke has some fucked up issues. The biggest being perhaps that his whole argument hinges on the Natural Law of Reason. Only, I'm not quite sure what the hell that is, in his own terms. This is key, since if I violate Natural Law, I put myself in the State of War vis-a-vis others and THEN can have my rights stripped. Hence, all there is a tremendous power located in the definition of this concept, and Locke does precious little to tease out what that means. (But that's why we have Kant I suppose...)
What really grabbed me about Locke this time around was that his theory is based, in a lot of ways, on natural history. Sure, Locke's "anthropological" story about a bunch of families in the State of Nature giviing Consent to form Government is a bunch of hooey. But it reflects how Locke is an early Enlightenment thinker: he does not just POSIT what the state should be, he builds an argument based off of human "nature" and "scientific" investigation. Locke is not just asserting a moral claim; he's trying to *figure out* an ideal moral standing.
It makes me wonder things: If I could talk to John-Boy today, and show him that sometimes economics could be used to force "consent," what would he say? If I could argue that people lack the ability to just leave their "commonwealth" due to their "encumbered" nature of social life, how would that alter his means for changing the state? If I could highlight the effects of hegemonic discourse, would he better prepare citizens for freedom rather than just assuming rebellion would happen when the Legislature violated its trust? What is exciting about Locke is that it doesn't have to be dogmatic.
In a lot of ways, there are a number of keen social theory insights in the text, especially regarding the persistence of habit, which is impressive giviin the age of the text (going on 350 years or so). Sure, he gets some stuff wrong and overstates his case and has some sloppy definitions. But, especially given his context, his endorsement of *liberty* is still breathtaking. I don't know that there are many thinkers ever, and certainly not in the contemporary world, that are quite as *revolutionary.* I'm all emotional over my Locke.
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Last time I read Locke (last year), I came away with the exact opposite impression, i.e., it left me thinking that Locke fetishizes property to a degree that is unfathomable.
I see what you are saying regarding the broader definition of property, and it leads me to the exact opposite conclusion. Chapter 2, 6: Locke justifies self-preservation as deduced from the fact that we are God's property! From a standpoint of moral philosophy, this just sounds silly. Maybe Locke is a deist (or, as a Straussian would probably argue, an unbeliever who is hiding his true meaning for fear of persecution), but this whole life = God's property thing strikes me as a not something consistent with Christian moral ideas/teaching.