This essay argues that many modern discussions of Locke’s political theory are unconsciously shaped by an imaginative picture of the world inherited from the past, on which authority and freedom are fundamentally antipathetic. The consequences of this picture may be seen in the distinction made customarily in Locke studies between the ‘authoritarian’ Locke of Two Tracts on Government, for whom authority descends from God, and the later, ‘liberal,’ Locke, for whom authority arises from the will and agreement of individuals, and felt in the emphases placed on consent and resistance in most interpretations of Lockean political thought. The essay examines the composition and contours of this picture and, by holding up a mirror to contemporary Locke scholarship, draws attention to some of the ways in which it unwittingly distorts Locke’s thinking.
L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), I, 129.
2.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 115.
3.
See M. Oakeshott, Lectures in the History of Political Thought (Exeter, England: Imprint Academic, 2006), 461.
4.
For recent re-statements of Locke’s pivotal role in establishing this truth in the minds of posterity, compare A. Patterson, Early Modern Liberalism ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 238-9, and C. Taylor, A Secular Age ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 159-60.
5.
For conceptual change generally, see James Farr, "Understanding conceptual change politically," in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. Terence Ball, James Farr, and Russell L. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 24-49.
6.
Alternative candidates have included Althusius, Hooker, and Hobbes amongst others. Compare O. Gierke, Johnannes Althusius und die Entwicklund der naturrechlichen Staatstheorien trans. B. Freyd as The Development of Political Theory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939), 257-77, H. Woldring, "The Constitutional State in the Political Philosophy of Johannes Althusius," European Journal of Law and Economics 5 (1998): 123-32; A. Rosenthal, Crown under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008); F. M. Coleman, Hobbes and America (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977); Q. Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 211-16.
7.
Compare H. Maine, Ancient Law (London: John Murray , 1861), W. Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen , 1974), 19-26, O. Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age, trans. F. W. Maitland ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900), 87.
8.
H.J. Laski, The Rise of Liberalism (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), 1-2.
9.
G. de Ruggiero, The History of European Liberalism, trans. R. G. Collingwood ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927), 3-4.
10.
See J.E.E. Dalberg-Acton, Essays on Freedom and Power, ed. G. Himmelfarb (Boston: Beacon Press, 1948).
11.
These are the two senses of authority captured in the traditional distinction between potestas and auctoritas, the one which connotes the possession of power and right and the other the possession of the capacity to augment or to originate a thing.
12.
See Q. Skinner , "Language and Conceptual Change," in Ball, Farr, and Hanson, Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, 6-23, at 13, for an analysis of this aspect of conceptual change.
13.
C. Leslie, The Finishing Stroke (London, 1711), 87.
14.
See the illuminating discussion in J. Dunn, "The Politics of Locke in England and America in the Eighteenth Century," in Political Obligation in its Historical Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 53-77, at 64-65.
15.
D. Hume, "Of the Original Contract," in Political Essays ed. K. Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 186-201, esp. 191-95. See also M.P. Thompson, "Hume’s Critique of Locke and the ‘Original Contract,’"Il Pensiero Politico10, no. 2 (1977): 189-201.
16.
The wider possibilities inherent in this line of criticism have been investigated most systematically in the modern era by Foucault. See M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House, 1977), 170-224.
17.
C. Leslie, The New Association (London, 1703), part II, appendix, 4-14, esp. 10 and compare idem., A Dissertation concerning Private Judgment and Authority (London, 1726), 1-8.
18.
A similar point is made in different terms in I. Shapiro, "Gross Concepts in Political Argument," Political Theory 17 (1989): 51-76, at 58. For the anarchist challenge, see R. P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper & Row, 1970). For responses and reactions, compare R. Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); L. Green, The Authority of the State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); M. Otsuka, Libertarianism without Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); and A. J. Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
19.
See J. Rawls , A Theory of Justice (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1971) in conjunction with R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously ( London: Duckworth, 1977), 151. For discussion, see J. Dunn, "Contractualism," in The History of Political Theory and Other Essays ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 39-65.
20.
Witness Hume’s observation that in "all governments, there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between AUTHORITY and LIBERTY." See D. Hume"Of the Origin of Government," in Political Essays, 20-23, at 22.
21.
See e.g. M. Dean, "Liberal Government and Authoritarianism,"Economy and Society31, no. 1 (2002): 37-61, in the light of Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations I, 107: "We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"
22.
See e.g. J. Rawls, Lectures on the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 11-13, and compare at length J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
23.
See e.g. A. MacIntyre, Secularisation and Moral Change ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 53-57, 72 and compare at length A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London: Duckworth, 1981). It should be added that all possibilities are not exhausted by these two, and that there are other ways of thinking about the change in view.
24.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 103.
25.
E. Renan, "What Is a Nation?" in Nation and Narration, ed. H. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 8-22.
26.
J. Locke, Two Tracts on Government, ed. P. Abrams ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967); Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Epistola de tolerantia / A Letter on Toleration, ed. R. Klibansky and trans. J. W. Gough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).
27.
See e.g. G. Parry, John Locke (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), 5; R. Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics & Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 76; M. Goldie, ed., Locke: Political Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), xviii. For blurring, see J. W. Gough, "Introduction" in Klibansky and Gough, Epistola de tolerantia/A Letter on Toleration, 7, 11. For obliteration, see R. P. Kraynak, "John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration," American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 53-69.
28.
Locke, Two Tracts, 123.
29.
Locke, Two Tracts, 125-26.
30.
Locke, Two Tracts, 123, 158; Two Treatises, II.vii.87-89, 366-69.
31.
U.S. Mehta, The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke’s Political Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 1.
32.
For the intellectual and historical significance of this account, see Q. Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Hobbes and Republican Liberty, passim.
33.
E. Bagshawe [the younger], The Great Question concerning Things Indifferent in Religious Worship (London, 1660), 4.
34.
See e.g. Locke, Two Tracts, 125, 120 for abuse of the "popular assertors of public liberty."
35.
Locke, Two Tracts, 121.
36.
Locke, Two Tracts, 120.
37.
Locke, Two Tracts, 237.
38.
See e.g. J.W. Gough, "The Development of Locke’s Belief in Toleration," in John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration in focus, ed. J. Horton and S. Mendus (London: Routledge , 1991), 57-77, 60; P.J. Kelly, "Authority, Conscience and Religious Toleration," in Horton and Mendus, John Locke, A Letter, 125-46, 132-33.
39.
Locke, Two Tracts, 119-20.
40.
For an extremely clear miniature of this picture, see Z. Rau, Contractarianism versus Holism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995), 70-3.
41.
See I. Harris , "The Legacy of Two Treatises of Government,"Eighteenth Century Thought3 (2007): 143-67, 158.
42.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.xix.212, 455-56.
43.
J.H. Franklin , "Allegiance and Jurisdiction in Locke’s Doctrine of Tacit Consent," Political Theory24, 1996, 407-22, at 407-8.
44.
Otsuka, Libertarianism [1].
45.
A.J. Simmons , On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent and the Limits of Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 73.
46.
R. Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987), 128.
47.
A. Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 275-82, at 278. Compare e.g. Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), ii, 338; Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics 315, 327-29; D. Wootton, John Locke: Political Writings (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1993), 88-89; J. Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205-91; M. Brocker, Die Grundlegung des liberalen Verfassungsstaates: von den Levellern zu John Locke (Freiburg, Germany: K. Alber, 1995), 195-278; J. Gordon, "By Any Means Necessary: John Locke and Malcolm X on the Right to Revolution," Journal of Social Philosophy 26 (1995): 53-85; L. Ward, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 209-46.
48.
Locke, Two Treatises, I.vi.52-53, 214-15.
49.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.ii.6, 311.
50.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.iv.23, 325.
51.
John Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. W. von Leyden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), no. 4, 156.
52.
Locke, Essays, no. 4, 156/57: "God wills that we do something. But what it is that is to be done by us can be partly gathered from the end in view for all things. For since these derive their origin from a gracious divine purpose and are the work of a most perfect and wise maker, they appear to be intended by Him for no other end than His own glory, and to this all things must be related." See also Essays, no. 6, 186, and compare J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), for arguments that God is the sort of person whom people ought to obey, because He is the supreme embodiment of the qualities that fit Him to direct them (eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, goodness). The conceptual requisites of this argument are present in An Essay, where it is argued that He has some of these properties (IV.x.6, 621) and it is stated that He has another (I.iv.12, 91); thus we find Locke writing in the same place not only of human dependence on God but also of the "Duty" to Him (I.iv.12, 91).
53.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.ix.128, 397.
54.
Locke, An Essay, III.xi.16, 516-17.
55.
For Locke’s view of moral agency and identity as the pendant to his view of law, see T. Stanton, "Locke the Thinker,"Locke Studies8 (2008): 23-58, at 35-50.
56.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.ii.4, 309.
57.
See by way of contrast J. Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,"Journal of Philosophy77 ( 1980): 515-72, at 546.
58.
J. Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 127.
59.
Locke, Essays, no. 7, 194 (for reverence and outward worship of God, love and concern for neighbours and relief for the needy), no. 4, 156 (for self-preservation).
60.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.ii, ix, 309-18, 395-99.
61.
See Locke, Epistola, 70-71: "A church seems to me to be free society of men, joining together of their own accord for the public worship of God in such a manner as they believe will be acceptable to the Deity for the salvation of their souls." Locke iterates the claim that this is a natural duty that "all men know and acknowledge" at 100-1.
62.
This should not be taken to imply that this is either the only or the most significant difference between Locke’s earlier and later views-only that making the point in this way captures something important that another way of looking at things does not. For a sense of the wider developments within Locke’s thinking between Two Tracts and Two Treatises, compare Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 11-40, 87-95, and I. Harris, The Mind of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 78-191.
63.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.ii.13, 316; compare Two Tracts, 201: "Voluit deus inter homines societatem ordinem et regimen esse."
64.
Cf. P. Josephson, The Great Art of Government: Locke’s Use of Consent ( Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 231: "One of the great challenges to a reading of Locke’s work as essentially democratic and liberal is his explicit teaching of the prerogative of the executive."
65.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.xi.135, 403. For the death penalty, see Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, 70n.
66.
Pace L. Ward, "Locke on Executive Power and Liberal Constitutionalism,"Canadian Journal of Political Science38 (2005): 719-44, at 728-29.
67.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.xviii.203, 449. Compare Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution, 278.
68.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.viii.97, 376.
69.
Harris, "Legacy," 159; compare Marshall, John Locke, 208n.
70.
See, among much else, R. Ashcraft, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 196-230; S. M. Dworetz, The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 34-37; J. Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205-91; M. Seliger, "Locke’s Theory of Revolutionary Action," Western Political Quarterly 26 (1963): 548-68; A. Tuckness, "Discourses of Resistance in the American Revolution," Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003): 547-63, which speaks of "the Lockean strand of resistance theory."
71.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.xix.241, 476; II.xvi.176, 433. For some implications of this point, see J. Dunn, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 40-43.
72.
More and better is said, in the context of Locke’s views concerning toleration, in I. Harris , "John Locke and Natural Law: Free Worship and Toleration," in Natural Law and Toleration in the Early Enlightenment, ed. J. Parkin and T. Stanton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
73.
See more extendedly J. Dunn, "The Identity of the History of Ideas,"in Political Obligation in its Historical Context, 13-28, and compare Q. Skinner, Visions of Politics, 3 vols. ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) i, 103-27, and Liberty before Liberalism, 110.
