John Locke: A Theory of Justice
which bridges Modern Binaries*
*Written for the Theories of Justice course with Professor Walsh
Bismillahi
al-Rahman al-Rahim
I
The assigned piece is far too long and nuanced to lend
itself to a simple and quick summary, But if one were to pick just two key
theses to describes Locke's concept of lawful and just government, they would
be: the establishment of government by consent or social
contract and the conduct of government in accordance with law. In Locke's own
words:
"...that which begins and actually constitutes any
political society is nothing but the
consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate
into such a society. And this
that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government
in the world." (Para 99, Reader)
And: "freedom of men under government is to have a
standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society ... and not be
subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man..."
(para 22, Reader)
In the early part of the treatise, Locke builds his
theory on grounds of reason as well as revelation and in the later part he
defends it against objections, especially those raised by the contenders for
monarchy, such as Sir Rober Filmer, whose Patriarchia probably
provides the backdrop for Locke's own treatise. It helps one's comprehension to
recall that, at the time Locke was writing, monarchy was widely viewed as the
more lawful form of government, republicanism being viewed as something
of a heresy. Three hundred years down the lane, the situation seems to be have
been reversed and it is hard to find anyone arguing in favour of anything but
the form of government which Locke defended. There must be some truth in the
theory for it to have gained so much acceptance.
II
In this post, let me highlight on just one aspect of
Locke's discourse which I find of great contemporary relevance. Locke's
discourse straddles two great binaries which characterise, and in my view
greatly impoverish, most modern discourses on justice: the reason/revelation
binary and the is/ought binary.
You will notice that wherever Locke makes an important
argument, he makes an effort to muster up arguments both from reason as well as
from the revelation which he and his readership strongly believed in - the Holy
Bible. The key to his approach is that he singles out neither this nor that but
relies on both. So, for instance, when he contends that people should be
entitled to personal property, he takes full account of a line from King
David's Psalms which, upon first reading, suggests a notion of common human
property over all the resources of the earth:
Blessed are ye of Jehovah,
Who made heaven and earth.
The heavens are the heavens of
Jehovah;
But the earth hath he given to
the children of men. (Psalm 115: American Standard
Version)
Deferring to the scriptural text,
Lock concedes that the resources of the earth are the common property of all
humankind. But he contends that this text refers only to resources which lie in
a state of nature. In the state of nature, the individual human being has
exclusive property over nothing except his own person and, by extension, the "labour of his body and the work of his
hands". But when a human being adds his labour to the value of
a natural resource, it becomes so mixed up with his person that it goes on from
being a common human heritage to becoming exclusively held private
property.
That said, Locke seems to
envisage certain limits on private property - at least while we are still in
the state of nature. For this, he quotes a text from the First Epistle of Paul
to Timothy:
"Charge them that are rich
in this present world, that they be not highminded, nor have their hope set on
the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do
good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute,
willing to communicate" Lock suggests that the divine
grant to mankind, which is indeed most generous, is still conditional. The
phrase "to enjoy" suggests that one may keep only so much as on can
enjoy, leaving the rest for others. And that in the state of nature this was
quite easy because of the constraints of nature: no one could cultivate more
land than he could enjoy the produce of. How this commandment is to be
fulfilled when we have moved out of the state of nature, Locke does not
suggest. Perhaps, he has in mind the Christian concepts of charity and
brotherhood.
I am hardly in a position to
appraise Locke's forays into Biblical exegesis. But I do think it is
fundamental to notice that Locke did not think he could ignore revelation-based
arguments while laying out his vision about a just and lawful government - a
view that has since gone on to enjoy such tremendous popularity all over the
globe.
Let me also mention that when
Locke argueds that "[e]very one ...ought...to preserve the rest of
mankind, and may not...take away or impair the life...liberty, health, limbs or
goods of another..." - an idea that now enjoys near universal
acceptance - he based this argument on fundamental premises derived straight from
the Abrahamic faiths. These premises include the belief that (i) there is only
one "Maker" in the universe, i.e. the God of
monotheists; (ii) that all human beings are "servants of one sovereign
Master, [and] are his property whose workmanship they are"
are, in this sense, "all equal and independent";
and (iii) therefore they should be "made to
last during His, not one another's pleasure." and "there cannot be supposed any such subordination
amongst us, that may authorize us to destroy one another."
(p.85b) We would only be honest to remind ourselves that these truths are
neither self-evident nor are they universally shared. These beliefs are the
fruit of a series of revelations which go back to the Prophet Abraham, upon him
be peace.
To sum up, Locke's view of things
seems to be grounded in the faith that both reason and revelation, if
understood truly, are pointing towards the same truth. His use of language
throughout the treatise betrays his worldview. Just look at the following
phrases: "Adam
had not, either by natural right... or by positive donation from
God...any such authority" (page 84a, Reader); "there
being no law of nature nor positive
law of God which determines which is the right heir in all cases that may
arise..." (ibid.); "God commanded man to labour and the penury of his condition
demanded it of him"
(p.91, Reader)
III
No less important is the other
modern binary which Locke defies: the is/ought binary. Locke does not confine
himself to proving how men "ought" to establish a government by
consent; he also takes pains to show that "as far as
we have any light from history, we have reason to conclude that all peaceful
beginnings of government have been laid in the consent of the people."
(p. 106b, Reader). He contends that while "looking back...[at] the
history of nations, we commonly find the government to be in one hand",
this is not because government is "by
nature monarchical, and
belonged to the father". (p. 104, Reader) Instead, this is
primarily because "all monarchies, near their original, have
been commonly ... elective";
and also because our view of early political history is only sketchy. (p.102,
Reader) He warns the "contender for paternal empire. not to search
too much into the original of governments as they have begun de facto, lest
they should find at the foundation of most of them something very little
favourable to the design they promote." That is, if you dig deep into
historical monarchies, you will find some original moment at which they started
as elective monarchies, becoming hereditary monarchies only later on.
In short, for Locke, the inquiry
into the positive and the normative is not completely isolated; instead, the
relationship between the two is dynamic. This is why he is not content with
telling us how government should
be started; he is also keen to show us this is how government has been started, almost
always. Why doesn’t Lock just ignore whatever happend history and focus purely
on his own theory, as so many contemporary political philosophers do? I think
this is because, for him, the history of mankind is not a history of darkness
and prejudice; instead, history is also to be viewed as a form of revelation,
as an unfolding of the will of the divine. In that sense, the “moral” thing and
the thing that “actually happened”, while not being identical, are still deeply
related, each shedding light on the other. This, again, is a perspective for
which Lock is indebted to the traditions of reasoning stemming from the
revealed books of the Abrahamic tradition.
IV
One last thought. At the very beginning of the
treatise, Locke takes care to point out the grand political theory he is
constructing is addressed only to him/her who "will not give just occasion
to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and
violence..." (p. 84a, Reader) It is only after discarding this
facile view of law and governance as mere-products of power and violence, or
“super-structure” as Marxists would call it, that Locke embarks upon "find[ing]
out another rise of government, another original of political power..."
In the postmodern academic environment dominated by the epistemology of Marx
and Foucault, this very first intellectual step has become quite difficult
for most students to take. The dominant tendency now is to deconstruct all
traditional human institutions including government and view them purely in
terms of the power interests which they supposedly serve. In an
environment such as this, it seems scarcely possible to spin another theory as
delicately woven, balanced and wide-spanning. Today, Locke's works therefore seems
all the more remarkable.