John Locke: A Theory of Justice which bridges Modern Binaries

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 enjoythat 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.