Essay concerning Human Understanding
It was statesman-philosopher Francis Bacon who, early in the
seventeenth century, first strongly established the claims of
Empiricism - the reliance on the experience of the senses - over
those speculation or deduction in the pursuit of knowledge.
John Locke in his Essay concerning Human Understanding
restates the importance of the experience of the senses over
speculation and sets out the case that the human mind at birth is
a complete, but receptive, blank upon which experience imprints
knowledge. Locke definitely did not believe in powers of
intuition or that the human mind is invested with innate
conceptions.
Two Treatises of Government
In these treatises Locke considers the origins of civil
government.
As population increases in relation to the supply of land
rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of
nature supplies. Locke suggests that whilst the moral law is
always valid it is not always kept this gives rise to problems of
social order. In a state of nature all men equally take upon
themselves the right to punish transgressors. What might be
called civil societies originate where, for the better
administration of the law in relation to the protection of life,
liberty, and property, men agree to delegate this function to
certain officers. Thus the government of civil societies is
initiated by an implicit, but effective, "social contract".
Locke saw the origin of civil society by such agreement as
inevitably involving the associated consent to be ruled, in many
things, by the majority opinion within the society. Locke did
however consider that certain "natural rights" were not
prejudiced by the formation of the civil society and should
remain inviolable.
To better avoid the emergence of tyranny through legislation
Locke advocated a system of checks and balances in government. He
saw governance as being comprised of three aspects, Legislative,
Executive, and Federative.
Locke in his Two Treatises of Government sets out to dismantle
the theory of divine right of kings. (The unpopular later Stuart
monarchs had often rested their ambitious claims to supremacy
largely upon their Divine Rights). In this work Locke argues that
sovereignty is not vested by divine right in the royal state but
rests with the people. States power can be supreme but
only, in Locke's view, if it operates within the bounds of
civil and "natural" law.
Locke saw the powers as such government as being limited, such
powers also involve reciprocal obligations. Governments moreover
can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred
them. Locke maintained, in his Two Treatises of Government
published just as it was just after an English revolution (for
which Locke was to be something of an apologist), that revolution
was not only a right but was often an effective obligation where
states denied the operation of civil and natural law.
Locke's political ideas as set out in the Two Treatises of
Government, such as those relating to civil, natural, and
property rights, the duty of the government to protect these
rights, were later embodied in the United States Declaration of
Independence and United States Constitution. Locke's ideas about
rights to life, liberty, and property, being altered and
re-presented as rights to life, liberty, and happiness.
Locke's ideas of the separation of governmental powers into,
legislative, executive, and federative, functions was more fully
developed by the French political writer Montesquieu in his De
l'Esprit de Lois (Spirit of the Laws) which was published in
1748.
In the form as developed by Montesquieu the notion of the
separation of powers (Legislative, Executive, and
Judicial) was incorporated into the American Constitution
framing process.
Thomas Jefferson, the principal draftsperson of the American
Declaration of Independence (in the summer of 1776) considered
Locke to have been one of the three "greatest men that have
ever lived, without any exception". Locke's view's, as set
out in his Two Treatises of Government, greatly influenced Thomas
Jefferson's political outlook. Thomas Jefferson also maintained a
particularly close study of Montesquieu's De l'Esprit de Lois
between 1774-1776.
In several direct ways the American Revolution of circa 1776
paved the way for the French Revolution of circa 1789. For one
thing the French kingdom, and many individual Frenchmen,
supported the American movement for Independence. Opinion in
France, and Europe, was stirred by seeing an aspirant people
successfully gaining in independence from an unpopular government
that served the interests of a King (George III). Perhaps more
critical was the degree to which French involvements in the
support of American Independence placed critical strains on the
finances of the French Royal State . It was this strain that led
to the convening of the first "Estates General" (French
representational assembly) for more than one hundred and fifty
years. Underlying tensions within French Society culminated in
the dramatic abandonment of the Estates General framework and to
the adoption of a novel, aspirational, "National Assembly"
framework on 17th June 1789 by the representatives of
France's commoner Third Estate. (The other two "Estates" being
the Nobility and the Clerics).
At this time Thomas Jefferson was serving, in Paris, as the
United States Ambassador to the French Kingdom. Before and after
the emergence of the National Assembly Jefferson worked, by
invitation, with the Marquis de Lafayette, (who had earlier been
prominent as a major-general amongst the "French" involvements in
the American War of Independence), on the preparation of various
key documents including a "Declaration of the Rights of Man and
of the Citizen" and also on a French Constitutional document. The
Marquis de Lafayette had invited Jefferson to give advice because
of the key role that he, Jefferson, had played in framing similar
documents for the emergent United States of America.
The French revolution from 1789 proved to be a world wide
watershed in human historical development. France, at that time,
was very significantly the most populous state in western Europe
and had a well established position of cultural predominance and
military power. The Revolution in France of 1789 was followed by
more than twenty years (1789-1815) of intermittent
"Revolutionary" and "Napoleonic" conflict that changed European
Society in very many ways.
Letters on Toleration
In his Letters on Toleration Locke advanced two main
arguments:-
On an ethical basis no Church has the right to persecute
anyone as alike with civil society the joining of a church does
not prejudice other "natural" rights which remain inviolable. The
direst sanction a church should have against those who strained
its powers of acceptance should be expulsion.
On a rational basis Locke argued about the practical
impossibility of any Church being absolutely certain that
it was THE vehicle of truth. Human knowledge and brains are
limited, faith is typically speculative and mysterious, certainty
in matters of faith is thus perhaps impossible to achieve and
hence persecutions are very much less acceptable than open-minded
exchanges of ideas where all may hope to gain a more true grasp
of faith related issues.
Locke recommended that "faithless" Atheism should not be
tolerated, nor should faiths that involved allegiance to foreign
powers be tolerated, nor should faiths that were themselves
intolerant be tolerated.
The advocation of Toleration in Religion was a controversial
matter and Locke's Letters on Toleration were published under his
initials rather than his full name. Locke did, however, leave
documentary evidence that provided for his authorship to be
acknowledged after his death.
Labour Theory of Value
Locke in some ways laid the foundations for Adam Smith and
David Ricardo's respective approaches toward a Labour Theory of
Value. Locke held that each person's body was uniquely their own
property. When a person worked they mixed something of themselves
into the productive process and this involves some infusion of
property right or interest.
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