John Locke: Father of Classical Liberalism and Natural Rights

In the autumn of 1659, a twenty-seven-year-old Oxford don named John Locke sat down at his desk in Christ Church and began a manuscript on the proper limits of political authority. He had been thinking about the question for at least three years, and the manuscript he produced — the Two Treatises of Government — would not be published for another thirty. When it finally appeared, in the winter of 1689, it was published anonymously, in the same year as the Glorious Revolution, and in support of the Whig interpretation of what the revolution had been about. The fact that the Two Treatises has come to be regarded as the founding text of modern liberal political thought — and of the American constitutional order, and of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and of the contemporary doctrine of universal human rights — is one of the more surprising facts in the history of political philosophy.

The fact is also, in some respects, misleading. The Two Treatises was, in its author’s own careful estimate, a “trifle” — a short, polemical work written to support a particular political settlement at a particular moment. The work that Locke himself considered his most important was the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), the long, careful, and remarkably patient work of philosophical psychology that, in the judgment of the best of the subsequent tradition, was, in fact, the more important of the two.

Locke was, in many respects, an unlikely candidate for the most important English philosopher of the late seventeenth century. He was the son of a country lawyer who had served as a captain in the parliamentary army during the English Civil War. He was educated at the Westminster School, where his schoolmaster was the great classicist Richard Busby, and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he spent most of his adult life, first as a student and then as a tutor and lecturer. He was trained as a physician and a natural philosopher, and he developed a deep interest in the new experimental philosophy of Robert Boyle, of Isaac Newton, and of the other members of the Royal Society. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1668, and he served as a member of the Council of Trade and Plantations, an important advisory body to the king on colonial and commercial policy.

The Life

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, on August 29, 1632, the son of a country lawyer who had served as a captain in the parliamentary army during the English Civil War. He was educated at the Westminster School in London and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he spent most of his adult life, first as a student and then as a tutor and lecturer. He never married, and he had few intimate friends. His most important personal relationship was with Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham, with whom he lived during his final years. He died on October 28, 1704, at the country house of the Mashams in Essex.

The decisive decade of his life was the 1670s and 1680s. In the early 1670s, Locke became deeply involved in the political struggles of the reign of Charles II and the brief reign of James II. He was associated with the Whig opposition, and he was forced to flee to the Netherlands in 1683 after a failed attempt to exclude the Catholic James from the succession. He returned to England in February 1689, in the fleet that brought Princess Mary of Orange to assume the throne. The exact circumstances of his return — whether he was on the same vessel as Mary, or on a separate ship, has been disputed — but the timing was crucial. The Two Treatises was published in the same year, and the Glorious Revolution was, in effect, the political settlement that the Two Treatises was written to defend.

The intellectual formation was complicated. Locke was, in the strict sense, neither a pure rationalist nor a pure empiricist. He was a careful reader of the works of Descartes, of Malebranche, of the Cambridge Platonists, and of the new experimental philosophy. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding was the result of a long process of gestation that began in the 1670s, and the work that emerged was, in fact, a careful synthesis of the best of the European philosophical tradition of the seventeenth century. The book was, in its author’s careful estimate, the most important work he had written. The political works were, in his own private estimate, of secondary importance.

The scholarly assessment of Locke has been transformed in the last forty years. The first transformation was the work of the Cambridge historian Peter Laslett, whose 1960 edition of the Two Treatises established the fact that the book was not, as had previously been supposed, a defense of the Glorious Revolution written after the event, but a defense of the Whig position written in the early 1680s and held back for publication until the political situation made it possible. The second transformation was the work of the Cambridge political theorist John Dunn, whose 1969 The Political Thought of John Locke argued that Locke’s political philosophy was, in fact, a theology of a particular kind, and that the proper reading of the Two Treatises was as an essay in the Calvinist tradition of the rights of resistance. The third transformation was the work of the political theorist James Tully, whose 1980 A Discourse on Property argued that Locke’s theory of property was, in fact, a theory of the proper limits of European imperial expansion in the Americas, and that the proper reading of the Two Treatises was, in part, as a defense of the rights of the English settlers in the colonies.

The most recent scholarship — the work of the late John Dunn, of the political theorist Mark Goldie, of the legal historian Brian Tierney, and of the Locke scholars at the University of Sheffield — has continued to complicate the picture. The standard view, that Locke was the founding father of modern liberal political thought, has been qualified in important respects. The qualifications are well taken, but they should not obscure the fact that Locke was, in fact, the most important English political philosopher of the late seventeenth century, and that the Two Treatises was, in fact, the most influential political work written in the English language between Hobbes and the American Revolution.

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) was Locke’s most important philosophical work. The book is, in its ambition, an attempt to do for the human understanding what Newton had done for the physical world: to lay out a careful, systematic, and empirically based account of the origin, the scope, and the limits of human knowledge. The book was, in its author’s careful estimate, the most important work he had written. The book was also, in the judgment of the subsequent tradition, the founding text of the British empiricist tradition that ran from Locke to Berkeley to Hume to the modern philosophy of mind.

The book opens with a rejection of the doctrine of innate ideas — the view that the human mind is born with certain ideas or principles already in it, and that these ideas are the foundation of human knowledge. Locke argues that there are no innate ideas, either in the speculative realm (ideas of God, of identity, of substance) or in the practical realm (principles of morality). The mind, he argues, is a “blank slate” (tabula rasa) at birth, and all knowledge comes from experience.

The argument was, in the 1680s, a piece of careful philosophical housekeeping. The doctrine of innate ideas had been the basis of a small philosophical industry — most influentially in the works of the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More — and the doctrine was, in Locke’s view, a piece of bad philosophy that stood in the way of the proper development of the new experimental philosophy. The argument was a careful refutation of the doctrine, and it was, in fact, a careful refutation of the doctrine on the doctrine’s own grounds. The argument was, in fact, a careful piece of philosophical naturalism.

The argument has been the basis of the British empiricist tradition that followed Locke. The tradition was developed, in the eighteenth century, in the work of Berkeley, of Hume, of the Scottish moralists, and of the American pragmatists. The tradition was, in the twentieth century, the basis of the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle, of the ordinary-language philosophy of the late Wittgenstein, and of the contemporary philosophy of mind. The tradition has been the object of a great deal of criticism, most famously in the work of Noam Chomsky, who has argued that the doctrine of the blank slate is, in fact, a piece of bad science, and that the proper response to the doctrine is the recognition that the human mind is, in fact, born with a set of innate structures that are, in the strict sense, the conditions of possibility of human knowledge. The argument is well advanced, but it is not closed.

The argument about the limits of knowledge is, in fact, the most important part of the Essay. Locke distinguishes among three kinds of knowledge: intuitive knowledge (the immediate perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas), demonstrative knowledge (the perception of agreement or disagreement through a chain of reasoning), and sensitive knowledge (the perception of the existence of particular external objects). Beyond these three kinds of knowledge, Locke argued, there were many important questions that human beings could not answer with certainty. He was particularly skeptical of the claims of traditional metaphysics, and he argued that the existence of God, while it could be established by a kind of demonstrative reasoning, was not susceptible to the kind of proof that metaphysical philosophers had claimed.

The argument about the limits of knowledge was, in fact, the basis of the more radical skepticism of David Hume. Hume took Locke’s account of the origin of ideas and pushed it in a much more skeptical direction, and the Humean skepticism was, in turn, the basis of the Kantian critique of pure reason. The trajectory of the British empiricist tradition is, in this sense, the trajectory of the modern philosophical tradition. The argument is, in this writer’s judgment, the most important of Locke’s contributions to the history of modern philosophy.

The Two Treatises of Government

The Two Treatises of Government (1689) is, in its political argument, the most influential political work written in the English language between Hobbes and the American Revolution. The First Treatise is a refutation of the doctrine of divine right monarchy, and the Second Treatise is a systematic defense of the Glorious Revolution and of the natural-rights tradition in political philosophy.

The First Treatise is a sustained attack on the political theory of Sir Robert Filmer, author of Patriarcha (published posthumously in 1680). Filmer had argued that political authority derived from the original authority of Adam over his children, and that kings ruled by divine right as the heirs of the original patriarchal authority. Locke argues, against Filmer, that there is no natural basis for Adam’s authority over his children, that the Bible does not support the doctrine of divine right, and that the patriarchal theory is inconsistent with the obvious facts of human history. The argument is, in its central move, a careful refutation of the doctrine on the doctrine’s own grounds.

The Second Treatise is the positive part of Locke’s political philosophy. It develops a systematic account of legitimate political authority based on the natural rights of individuals. Locke begins with a description of the state of nature, a hypothetical condition in which human beings live together without a common superior. In the state of nature, Locke argues, all human beings are free and equal, and they possess certain natural rights — to life, liberty, and property — that are anterior to any government and that no government can legitimately violate.

The state of nature is not, however, a state of war. It is a state of equality, in which each individual has the right to enforce the law of nature against those who violate it. But the state of nature is also a state of inconvenience, in which the rights of individuals are not securely protected, and in which the passions of individuals lead to conflict and injustice. To remedy these inconveniences, human beings enter into civil society by means of a social contract, in which they agree to give up some of their natural rights to a common authority that will protect their remaining rights.

The proper end of government, for Locke, is the protection of the natural rights of the citizens. Governments that fail to protect these rights, or that actively violate them, forfeit their legitimacy. The people have the right to resist or to overthrow such governments, and to establish new governments that will protect their rights. This argument was a systematic defense of the Glorious Revolution, in which the Catholic James II had been replaced by the Protestant William and Mary. It was also a foundation document of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the modern human rights tradition.

The argument has been the subject of a small critical industry. The standard view — most influentially argued by Leo Strauss in Locke’s Doctrine of the Natural Law (1953) — was that the political philosophy of the Two Treatises was, in fact, a careful essay in the natural-law tradition, and that the proper reading of the book was as an essay in the medieval natural-law tradition of Aquinas and Grotius. The more recent view, in the work of the political theorists James Tully, of Mark Goldie, and of the late John Dunn, has been that the political philosophy of the Two Treatises was, in fact, a careful essay in the Whig tradition of the rights of resistance, and that the proper reading of the book was, in part, as a defense of the rights of the English settlers in the colonies. The argument is well advanced, but it is not closed.

The Letter Concerning Toleration

The Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) was Locke’s most important work on religion and politics. It was written in response to the religious conflicts of the late seventeenth century, and it developed a systematic argument for the principle of religious freedom.

Locke’s central argument is that the state has no authority to use force in matters of religious belief. The state, he argues, is concerned with the protection of the civil interests of its citizens — their life, liberty, and property — and it has no competence to determine the religious beliefs of its citizens. The church, on the other hand, is a voluntary association of believers, and it has no authority to use force against its members or against non-members.

Locke’s argument was not a defense of complete religious freedom. He excluded Catholics from the scope of toleration, on the grounds that they owed allegiance to a foreign power, and he excluded atheists, on the grounds that they could not be trusted to keep their promises. But the basic principle of religious freedom was established, and later thinkers extended it to all religious groups. The argument has been the basis of the modern doctrine of religious freedom, of the modern doctrine of the separation of church and state, and of the modern doctrine of the rights of conscience.

A Judgement

Locke is, in the judgment of this writer, the most important English philosopher of the late seventeenth century, and one of the most important in the history of modern philosophy. The reason is partly that the Essay Concerning Human Understanding was, in fact, the founding text of the British empiricist tradition, and the tradition was, in turn, the basis of the modern philosophy of mind. The reason is partly that the Two Treatises of Government was, in fact, the founding text of the modern liberal political tradition, and the tradition was, in turn, the basis of the American constitutional order, of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and of the contemporary doctrine of universal human rights. The reason is partly that the Letter Concerning Toleration was, in fact, the founding text of the modern doctrine of religious freedom.

Locke is also, in this writer’s judgment, a much more interesting figure than his twentieth-century reputation allowed. The older Anglo-American view — that Locke was a kind of bourgeois ancestor of the Enlightenment, a man whose political philosophy was, in effect, a defense of the propertied middle class — has been qualified in important respects. The more nuanced view, in the work of the late John Dunn, of the political theorist James Tully, of Mark Goldie, and of the Locke scholars at the University of Sheffield, is that Locke was, in fact, a more complicated figure than the older accounts allowed. The proper response to the older accounts is not the postmodern critique but a careful re-reading of the works themselves, in the light of the best of the recent scholarship.

The most lasting of Locke’s contributions is, in this writer’s judgment, the natural-rights tradition. The tradition has been the basis of the American Declaration of Independence, of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, of the contemporary doctrine of universal human rights, and of the modern constitutional tradition. The tradition has also been the object of a great deal of criticism, most famously in the work of Jeremy Bentham, who dismissed the natural-rights tradition as “nonsense upon stilts.” The Benthamite critique is well taken in some respects, but it should not obscure the fact that the natural-rights tradition has, in fact, been the basis of a great deal of practical political work, and that the proper response to the critique is not the abandonment of the tradition but a careful re-statement of the doctrine in the light of the best of the contemporary philosophical and political work.

The Life

The Essay Concerning Human Understanding

The Two Treatises of Government

The Letter Concerning Toleration

A Judgement

Further Reading