The political thought of John Locke : an historical account of the argument of the ’Two treatises of government’

306 Pages·2000·9.68 MB·English

by  John Dunn

THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF
JOHN LOCKE
AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE
ARGUMENT OF THE
‘TWO TREATISES OF g o v e r n m e n t ’

THE
POLITICAL THOUGHT
OF JOHN LOCKE
AN HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE
ARGUMENT OF THE
‘TWO TREATISES OF government’
JOHN DUNN
Fellow of/(jng's College and Professor of
Political 'Ibeory in the University of Cambridge
Cambridge
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1969
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permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1969
Reprinted 1975
First paperback edition 1982
Reprinted 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995
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isbn 978-0-521-07408-7 Hardback
isbn 978-0-521-27139-4 Paperback
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FOR SUE

CONTENTS
Preface page ix
PART I
i Introduction: John Locke in History: The Problems 5
2. The Developing Mind 1 1
3 The Essarys 011 the Law of Nature 19
4 The Ersery on Toleration 27
PART II
5 The Two Treatises and Exclusion 43
6 Sir Robert Filmer 5 8
7 Locke and Hobbes 77
PART Ill
8 The Premises of the Argument 8 7
9 The State of Nature 96
10 The Creation of the Legitimate Polity 120
1 1 Prerogative 148
12 Public Good and Reason of State 157
1 3 The Conditions for Legitimate Resistance 165
14 The Law of Nature 187
PART IV
15 The Coherence of a Mind 1 20;
16 The Coherence of a Mind 2 2 1 4
17 The Coherence of a Mind 3 229
PART V
18 The Calling: Tradition and Change 245
19 Conclusion
Bibliography 269
Index 285
vii

PREFACE
The claim that the account given here of Locke's argument in the
Two Treatises of Government is ‘historical' implies that its status
depends upon the adequacy of its identification of Locke's own
meaning. It is often assumed that there is little serious problem
about identifying the meaning of the argument of such a book—
that we can see readily enough what Locke meant or, at the very
least, what Locke raid.1 In so far as the present work resembles an
attempt at an extended archaeological excavation of Locke's mind,
it may seem at first glance that the entire enterprise is supereroga­
tory, that it is an exercise in the painful excavation of what is al­
ready wholly above the ground. However plausible such an
expectation may be a priori it will, I hope, be disconfirmed by a
reading of the ensuing work.
By ‘historical', then, is meant an account of what Locke was
talking about, not a doctrine written (perhaps unconsciously) by
him in a sort of invisible ink which becomes apparent only when
held up to the light (or heat) of the twentieth-century mind. 2 More
precisely, what I attempt is to give an account of what Locke was
maintaining in the central argument of the Two Treatises.3 It is not
a critique of this argument and, in particular, it does not expand
on the theme of how inadequate Locke's argument is to resolve
the puzzlements of contemporary political theory. There are two
separate reasons for this. The first is that a large proportion of the
scholarly, and more especially the journal, literature on Locke has
been preoccupied with this task, a succession of determined
philosophers mounting their scholastic Rosinantes and riding
1 Cf. Alm Ryan, '^xke and the Dicutonhip of the Bourgeoisie', Political Studies
xm, .z (June 1965), 219. I have commented on the oddity of this claim in an article,
‘The Identity of the History of Ideas', Philosophy (April 1968), pp. 85-104.
• Cf. C. B. Macpherson, The Pol/liea/ Theory of Posmm,e IndiV/dtial/inn (Oxford, 1962);
Leo Strauss, Na/aral Rjghe aNJ Hislory (Chicago, 1953); Richard H. Cox, harlot 011
War aNJ Peare (Oxford, i96o).
• In the em/ral argument of the TIMI Trealiiw, not of course in all the arguments of
that prolix work, which would require a text several times longer than ^rcke’s
own and strikingly more boring than its original.
ix
PREFACE
forth to do battle with a set of disused windmills, or solemnly and
expertly flailing thin air. In this dimension what it hopes to
achieve is simply to restore the windmill to its original condition,
to show how, creakingly but unmistakably, the sails used to tum.
Even at the level of preserving ancient monuments it is perhaps a
service to recondition these hallowed targets. There seems little
purpose in recording hits on a target that has no existence outside
our own minds—and even if there is thought to be point in such
an activity, it can scarcely entitle us to dignify our targets with the
identity of a historical figure like Locke. 1
The second reason is more personal. At one level all that can be
said about this pastime is that if you like tilting against those kinds
of windmill, those are the kinds of windmill against which you like
to tilt. But a less unbending subjectivism normally maintains that
the point of such commentaries is the illumination which they
bring to contemporary philosophical issues. Clearly it is at least
logically possible that Locke might have been talking about very
different issues and yet the critical reactions to his words of a
philosopher today still provide a powerful illumination of con­
temporary philosophical issues. In this sense, the reasons why I
have confined my attention to giving an effective exposition of
Locke’s argument and refrained from systematic formal criticism
are bleakly autobiographical. I simply cannot conceive of con­
structing an analysis of any issue in contemporary political theory
around the ^^rnation or negation of anything which Locke says
about political matters. The only argument in his entire political
philosophy which does seem to me still to be interesting as a
starting point for reflection about any issue of contemporary
political theory is the theme of the Letters on Toleration,1 and in
1 Cf. John Passmore, ‘The Idea of a History of Philosophy’, History mid Theory,
supplement 5, ‘The Historiography of the History of Philosophy’, pp. 1-52. ‘Too
often, indeed, such polemical writings consist in telling men of straw that they have
no brains ’ (p. 13). One reason, thus, why I have not presented an extended critique
of Cocke’s argument and expanded on the theme of how inadequate it is to resolve
the puzzlements of contemporary political theory is that on historical examination
it becomes dear that he was not talking about these.
z Cf. also, {possibly, Viano’s construction of Cocke's bequest to the enlightenment as
the insistence on a form of social freedom essential to the advancement of science,
making ^ocke the Michael Polanyi or Karl Popper th sesjo11rs. Sec Carlo Augusto
Viano, ]obn L«<A:r: Dal Raz.iimidimo all’Ulmidnimo (Turin, 1960), esp. p. 608:
‘Riconoscere il primato dell’intellig^cnza signifies riconosccrc la neecssitk di pro-
X