John Locke’s Views on Property and Liberty, as Outlined in His Second Treatise of Government

John Locke’s Views on Property and Liberty, as Outlined in His Second Treatise of Government

John Locke’s views on property and liberty, as outlined in his Second Treatise of Government (1690), have had varying interpretations and treatments by subsequent generations of authors. At one extreme, Locke has been claimed as one of the early originators of Western liberalism, who had sought to lay the foundations for civil government, based on universal consent and the natural rights of individuals. [1] Others have charged that what Locke had really done, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was to provide a justification for the entrenched inequality and privileges of the bourgeoisie, in the emerging capitalist society of seventeenth century England. The crux of these arguments either way have centered on Chapter 5 in the Second Treatise, entitled ‘Of Property’.

John Locke’s ‘Of Property’:

Locke was dissatisfied with explanations given by such authors as Robert Filmer, which had sought to rationalize the absolutism of monarchs by establishing that God had given all property to Adam and his heirs (based on the claims of Monarchs that they were indeed his descendents). Rather, his aim at the beginning of Chapter 5 is “to show how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners.” [2]

Locke’s first assumption is that although God gave “the world to men in common,” all men have a ‘right’, in the first instance, “to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence.” [3] Each individual has also been given “reason to make use of it to the best advan...

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...London, Allen & Unwin, 1976.

Bibliography:

Gough, J.W. John Locke’s Political Philosophy: Eight Studies, London, Oxford University Press, 1950, Ch. 4.

Hundert, E.J. ‘Market Society and Meaning in Locke’s Political Philosophy’ in Journal of the History of Philosophy, XV (1977)

Locke, John (edited by Peardon, Thomas, P.) The Second Treatise of Government, New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1952 [1690], Ch. 5.

Macpherson, C.B. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, Part 5.

Ryan, A. ‘Locke and the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie’ in Political Studies, XIII:2 (June, 1965)

Ryan, A. Property and Political Theory, London, Oxford University Press, 1987, Ch. 1.

Weber, Max, (trans. Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (2nd edn.), London, Allen & Unwin, 1976.