-important aspect of Locke’s doctrine of limited govt. is his repeated emphasis on the supremacy or sovereignty of the law, both in state of nature and in a situation of government  (see references throughout).

-we find this in a significantly modified version today in the idea of constitutional supremacy—that there is an overarching legal framework with substantive laws and that any government cannot make laws that contradict the substance of the constitution (as in the Canadian Charter)

-what is significant in Locke’s view is how this emphasis on the supremacy of the law is tied to a larger worldview that involves a transcendent conception of God as the ultimate source of the natural law to which we must submit.  Hence in the Lockean view the whole conception of the supremacy of law is very much bound up with the idea of submission to a divine will given to us from without (from the beyond).  We carry out that divine will in a fallen earth through our activities of hard work and expansion of wealth.  Hence it involves us also in a tremendous asceticism and disciplining of the self.

-this view can be put into some kind of perspective by comparing it to Greek immanentism (the idea of the divine not as in the beyond but as indwelling in the world [although Plato paves the way for the transcendent conception, in Aristotle and in Greek society as a whole the idea is more one of immanence]). Here, the view is of an ordered cosmos, with each element playing its own role.  The essence or the form of the thing is immanent within it, and is brought out through development.  For example, in humans our essence as political developed over time, as humans went from forming villages to forming political communities with leisure time as the ultimate mode of existence.   The purpose or “law” of the thing is embodied in its nature and experienced as an urge or an instinct.  (the urge toward politics). 

            -what is interesting here is that the essence or idea of our purpose is not imposed on us from without, according to a conception of the law coming from the beyond, but is experienced from within our own natures.  And so one can educate or habituate oneself to accord spontaneously with one’s purpose (for Aristotle as a virtuous person).  But the urge towards virtue or moderation already exists.  This is a dramatically different understanding of the relationship between mind and body.  Just as there is no sharp separation between humans and nature as a whole in the Greek worldview, so there is no sharp separation between mind and body.  The form or telos of the self is immanent also within our physical nature and developed in accordance with it.  The physical self is not repressed or disciplined in the modern sense, but educated, habituated.

-with the rejection of this whole worldview in the transition from ancient to modern, and in rejecting the Christianized Aristotelianism of the middle ages, the whole framework for education and habituation is disrupted (for example habituation into predetermined roles of class and sex).  Nature becomes raw desire, passion and impulse, appetite and aversion, and reason stands over against it, just as humans stand over against a new de-personalized nature.   The transcendent conception of God in Christianity, and particularly its Protestant versions, is analogous to this new relationship of mind and body.

-of course, what is also bound up with this constellation is a new emphasis on equality and individual freedom

-Hobbes’s solution to the problem of unity and community that emerges out of this new situation is the absolute sovereign, which is the coalescing of the powers of mind and will (as posed over against raw nature) in the hands of one man or body of men.  Hence nature (in the sense of men driven by appetites and aversions) is disciplined by an external and forceful will. 

-what we have in Locke, as a development on the Hobbesian position, and as critical in the modern condition, is the emergence of a capacity for an internalized discipline, and this required the religious force of Locke’s particular brand of Protestantism.  Hence we have the movement of an external force of discipline from the exterior to the interior of the human being, and all of this from within the early modern separation of mind and body.  The body is not cultivated now, or habituated in the Aristotelian sense (although of course it is in childhood), but is disciplined by an external reason, whether it be in the figure of the sovereign or in the “supremacy of the law” that we impose on ourselves.  The problem is that it is still an imposition on a recalcitrant nature (our “fallen” condition), rather than a cultivation of a potential that already exists within nature (Aristotle).  Hence the former position (Locke’s) is fundamentally bound up with repression, asceticism, denial of nature, and all of the problems tied to this.

(the relationship to the nature without is really analogous to this domination of the nature within.)

-Locke’s conception of individual self-rule is thus fundamentally bound up with a new version of domination and submission, one which is still reflected in the excessively ideological motivated movements of our time.  It represents a kind of internalized master-servant relationship, between abstract reason and the nature within.  But ultimately the whole problem is bound up with this artificial separation of mind and body which is theorized in early modernity and religiously symbolized in the transcendent and punitive God. 

-Rousseau will attempt to overcome this harsh split between mind and body through a new concept of nature, a new way of getting at that nature theoretically (beyond the limited scientific rationality of Hobbes and Locke), and thus ultimately through developing a new concept of self-rule which does not succumb to this domination of mind over body.

Private property is necessary for survival in a society that has become individualistic, that has rejected the old idea of organic classes and society as a harmonious whole.  Reflects the existential and material need to make one’s own way in the world, independently of the community.  Private property as a moral institution is a modern phenomenon that reflects modern individualism. (Locke himself, of course, does not recognize its modern context, but views it as universal)

The actual argument for private property.  –chap. 5.

Begin from the premise that we are separate from the community and independent of it (individual as prior to community), as Hobbes and Locke do.  What do we have as a basis for survival?  Our bodies, our labouring power, our energy.  This is the foundation of our “property” for Locke.  We “own” our bodies and our capacities—they do not belong to the community (contra the ancients).  We acquire property (in land primarily—for Locke) through mixing our labour (which we own) with the external world (the land we till) and thereby extend our ownership into the land.  E.g. gathering of nuts, picking of apples, planting seeds and growing them….. All based on this premise of extending our labour into things, mixing our labour with things and thereby making them our own.    (can see why Locke would be important to a settler society like the United States, where the land was seen to be there for the taking). 

Morality is necessary to a system based on private property because working the land or other things makes us vulnerable to invasion by others.  If another can raid my land, or take my store of apples, then my right to those things becomes meaningless.  Hence, as Locke saw, a system of private property depends on the capacity of individuals to recognize and respect each other’s right to property.  Property presupposes morality.  Very obvious if we look at our own feelings/reactions to our things and their violation—we expect this respect from others and are upset when it is not granted.  Most of us are not governed by our fear of the police but by our genuine respect for the rights of others.

Locke presupposes the morality associated with modern private property as something held by every individual and as imparted to them by their reason.  (see above).

1)     no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions  (all creatures of God)

2)     every one bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully

3)     “when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another” (9). (on this last, see above).  But self comes first, others later (reflects the loss of traditional community.)

This morality is basic in order to sustain the institution of private property

But in addition to the above, Locke also says that there are 3 natural limitations on the amount of property you can acquire:  1) the amount you can mix your labour with; 2) spoilage—don’t take so much that you cannot use it before it spoils; 3) must leave as much and as good behind for others.  This is consistent with the moral principles outlined above.  It also seems to really limit the amount of accumulation,  However, as Locke explains, with the introduction of money the possibility of transcending these limitations and of accumulating in an unlimited fashion emerges.  How so?

If money historically is introduced as a way of facilitating trade (as opposed to a simple barter system), then, it immediately overcomes the spoilage limitation.  We can trade our excess supply of nuts or wheat or apples for gold or silver.  These latter will not rot.  There is nothing immoral about this.  One can then accumulate more and trade it for money. 

In order to accumulate more, we have to work more.  Those who work more accumulate more gold and silver.  They are still leaving “as much and as good” behind, because they are trading their excess on the market and contributing to the general wealth.  P. 23:  “he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind:  for the provisions serving to the support of human life, produced by one acre of enclosed and cultivated land are (to speak within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness lying waste in common”  Goes on to suggest it’s more like 100 times more productive, and gives the example of  “the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniences of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in devonshire, where they are well cultivated. “ (24)  Goes on to say that with all their nature and wealth the natives of America, because they do not labour the land, are “clad worse than a day-labourer in England”.  In England a much smaller parcel of land is cultivated but can clad even the poorest people better than when a large tract of land is left in “waste”. 

Hence, the “industrious and the rational” should be left free to expand their holdings.  Others who object and who will not work the land themselves are the “quarrelsome and contentious”. 

Still, the amount of accumulation is limited by the labour limit—what oneself and one’s family can work on.  But even this limit is transcended.  Although Locke does not explicitly acknowledge this, he is presupposing that people will be in a position or be willing to sell their labour to others.

People start off owning only their own bodies and their own labour.  Why would somebody sell their labour to another instead of simply acquiring their own land?  Perhaps there isn’t enough land (as eventually there will not be).  Perhaps the person prefers to work for another rather than to work for themselves.  Perhaps they are a failure as a farmer and hire themselves out to be directed by another.  But what is also significant here is that the very concept of selling one’s labour for a certain period of time is a new concept, (compared to feudal England where people were tied to a land and a landlord), and requires the idea of ownership of one’s body in order to be possible.  Only if I own my own body and capacities can I decide to sell them to another for a wage. 

Since Locke is presupposing (and providing a theoretical justification for) wage labour, it turns out that even the labour limit is not a real limit on what people can accumulate.  For if I buy your labour for a wage, then also I own the *product* of your labour.  What you mix your labour with, becomes not yours but mine.  (e.g. write a report for your boss, sell clothes in a store….you get your wage, not the profit that results, because the owner owns your time and your work in exchange for the wage).  Since I own your time and your labour power, everything you produce in that time with that power, becomes mine.

What in fact happens, according to Locke, after the introduction of money, and with the presupposition that people can sell their labour, is that the natural differences between people in terms of their levels of drive, industry and efficiency, become very explicit.  Once the spoilage limitation is overcome, those who really are good at producing wealth, at extracting wealth from the land, at working hard, at organizing others to work hard and efficiently, will increase their property dramatically.  Others, who are less hardworking, less efficient, have less drive, will not accumulate.  There is nothing wrong with this inequality.  Indeed, those who get more property are in fact benefiting the community more because they are producing more general wealth.  And the idea is that eventually this wealth will trickle down and benefit all members of the society. 

How does it benefit the neighbour who is not so industrious or rational?  At first, it might not seem to.  He might have trouble producing at the same rate as his richer neighbour, and his richer neighbour may be able to undersell him at the marketplace.  Hence he can’t sell his own produce and meet his needs.  However, the rich producer can offer to buy the neighbour’s land.  Then the rich man can put that land under production more effectively and efficiently.  Instead of merely using his sons and daughters to work the land, he can hire local vagrants and pay them a small wage to work the land also.  This is more efficient than having more and more babies.  Indeed, he might even hire the original neighbour as a labourer.  This is good for everybody, in Locke’s scheme, because the large landholder is more rational, more efficient in his use of the land.  He is providing not only for his own family, but all of the workers on his farm.  He is successfully extracting more and more produce from the land, and feeding more and more people.  It is much better if the efficient people farm the land than the inefficient people.  Indeed, he might be able to buy or to invent new farm implements that do some of the labour and then produce even more efficiently.  Now the other farmers will indeed have difficulty competing with his prices at market, unless they also behave in the same fashion—hire labourers, improve their technology, work harder, focus singlemindedly on efficiency. 

Under such a system of expansion of landholdings, even in a new country, the land will eventually run out.  Then there will be no possibility for a new person to begin their own farms.  How will they survive?  They will sell their labour and work on the farms.  Presumably, those who are really rational and industrious and efficient will rise in the ranks and become managers, perhaps even accumulate enough money to start their own operations.

The division which emerges out of the original state of equality, then, is a division not so much between the rich and the poor (although it is that as well), but between “the rational and industrious” on the one hand, and the “quarrelsome and contentious” on the other, according to Locke.   A class society emerges out of the drive to preserve oneself by means of private property.  It rewards those who work hard and are productive.  Property becomes concentrated in their hands.  Others become workers, who survive through wage labour, and these indeed are the mass of the population.

But, according to Locke, it also benefits even the least able members of society, as his statement about the day labourer in England suggests.  The day labourer of course worked 10-12 hours a day, lived in a hovel, was probably ridden with disease.  But still, he says, this day labourer has more wealth than the native of north America lives in a tent and wears skins and eats pemmican, bannock, and roots.  Hence he is better off than the Native.  Hence such a system shows itself to be clearly superior to any other type of system. 

The basic standard for judgement about a system of private property being the best and the most just, lies not merely in the appetitive self that Locke takes up, following Hobbes.  For nowadays, most of us would, even from the perspective of our appetitive selves, choose the life of the native over that of the day labourer.  What is clear is that peculiar type of morality at play here.  To accumulate more and more, not only for the sake of oneself but also for the community, is not a natural drive but a moral drive.  One must believe it is one’s duty to do so.  In order to do so, one must deny oneself the pleasure of being.  One must live an ascetic existence. (ex. of corporate exec.).   One must be dedicated to hard work.  One must be intent on extracting as much as possible from the natural environment in order to materially benefit human existence.   One must believe that to leave the land lying “waste” is a great sin against humanity.  One must constantly be intent on being efficient and productive. 

Thus the morality that underpins the system of private property turns out to entail a very particular way of being in the world.  The very commitment to efficiency and expansion of wealth and self-preservation as the ultimate end, as well as other values bound up with Locke’s system such as the individual’s independence from the larger community, are not universal, as Locke supposed, but highly particular.  HENCE they are bound to generate OTHERS who do not fit in with this system. 

The case of the Natives is an obvious one.  It is clear that the Natives themselves have not accepted the kind of justification above as the basis for European title to the lands.  But one can also look at the example of Black Africans.  Locke’s argument for slavery in chapter four cannot be separated from his own economic involvement in the African slave trade (Macpherson p.x).  In this argument he suggests that the only time anyone can be rightfully enslaved is if they have engaged in an “unjust war”, where they have violated the laws of the state of nature, invaded the life/property of another, and have come to be subdued by the aggrieved party.  In such a case, the original aggressor has given up their original right to life and freedom, and can rightfully be put to death.  If the defending party chooses to keep them alive and have them work as slaves, there is nothing unjust.  “he, to whom he has forfeited it [his life], may (when he has him in his power) delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service, and he does him no injury by it….” (17).  One can infer from this that he justified the African slave trade with reference to the idea of the Africans as aggressors, who had thereby given up their natural rights.  It seems likely that Locke was simply incapable of recognizing cultural differences, particularly those that pertained to different ideas about property, and could only cast these differences as an irrational deviation from the laws of nature.  That an expansionist economic system, a moral devoutness and a cultural blindness became bound up with European colonialism is not surprising. Thirdly, one can look to the example of the working class, who became explicitly excluded from equal participation in the Lockian system, who were not democratically represented, and who undoubtedly had a different understanding of how to preserve themselves and what values promoted this, than did the Lockeian property owning individual.  (Macpherson’s book elaborates on the first two aspects of this in particular).

The problem of the generation of “others” in such an expanding system, others who are bound to resist the logic of this expansionism, can also be inferred by the very need for government in Locke’s system.  If most people are peaceful and law-abiding, it is not  clear why there is even a need for government.  But Locke points out various defects in the state of nature—the need for an independent judge and promulgated standing laws, because of men’s partiality to their own case, as well as a need for a police force to execute the law (para. 124-127).  But it also seems that as history developed, there was more and more tendency towards conflict (para. 123).  Locke speaks in particular of “the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men” (para.128).  It is not so much the division of humans into good and bad that causes the need for govt., as Locke suggests, but the very particularity of the system that generates its own others.  It ends up being a system that must be enforced, because it cannot generate the consent of those who do not fit within it, or benefit from it.

Above and beyond this problem of otherness bound up with the development of a system based on the unlimited accumulation of private property, is a further contradiction.  And this is that, once a class division opens up between workers and owners, the very premise of equality with which the system began, is undermined.  At the very beginning in a settler society, where there is plenty of land available, it might be possible to argue that anyone who has the drive and energy and capacity can make a go of it.  But once the land is taken up and there is none left, or once we are talking about an industrialized society where the basis of the economy is no longer primarily agricultural, then formal “equality of opportunity” does not any longer ensure a real equality, or ensure that merit and drive will win out.  Where one is born—what class, what community—in a condition of socio-economic inequality clearly also will determine how one ends up.  This is not recognized or accounted for in Locke’s system.  Rather, it is assumed that, if people are not formally discriminated against on the basis of race or sex or ethnicity, that merit will reveal itself, the “best” in the sense of the most hardworking and efficient, will be the most successful.  Other cultural and economic factors that determine how one does, are not considered.

Another way of saying this isto say that there is no compassion in Locke’s system.  The losers are seen to be the losers through their own fault.  The winners are the winners because they are believed to be the best, not because of any inherited advantages they might have.  This thinking is at the basis of the great American dream—that the cream will rise to the top if we get rid of the old snobbish European class system. If people are allowed to compete with one another on the basis of their choices, their drive, their ability, their hard work, then the market will select those are best.  Of course without some method of equalizing out the new class differences, this is not true. 

In spite of these two primary contradictions with the system, it is this system and this morality, along with the enormous degree of exploitation of people and the environment that it has justified, that is responsible for much of the wealth and technological achievement of western societies.  And historically, the other great competitor for modernization (communism) has been discredited.

Furthermore, the individualism that underpins this system is integral to the subjectivity of modern people’s.  The idea of individual independence, choice and self-expression are central to the modern value system.  Private property remains a central way of conceptualizing how we are to express our freedom and independence.  Clearly private property does not find its ultimate rationale in the idea of self-preservation, as Locke thought, for plenty of peoples have survived historically quite well without the institution of private property.  However, it is central to the self-expression and independence of the modern self. 

In an adulterated form, e.g., as laissez-faire capitalism, without consciousness of its own cultural particularities and without any compassion for the ills generated by such a system left unfettered (new inequality, widepread poverty, huge division between rich and poor), it is indeed unsustainable.  But historically it has shown itself to be capable of moderation.  To comprehend this, however, we must appeal to other principles outside the Lockeian system of thought, and we can find this in Rousseau.

(see Aristotle comparison overhead)

We have seen how Locke’s conception of a natural right to private property as analysed in its historical development, leads to a class society based on those who own much, and those who own only their own capacity for labour.  We have seen also that the peculiarly modern and Protestant conception of existence that Locke bases his political philosophy on necessarily enters into antagonism with those others who do not fit into this worldview (such as aboriginal peoples and African tribes), and whom Locke does not recognize as legitimate (since he believes his own worldview to be based on the universal and rational laws of reason).   In light of this we can now understand why the state of nature in Locke, which is governed by moral reason, necessarily breaks down and requires the institution of a political society and a mode of government.

If people are moral, and they can execute the laws of nature themselves, why would it be necessary to create a political community at all?  Why couldn’t we live in a state of anarchy?  Locke talks variously of “the inconveniences” of the state of nature “and the love and want of society” (s. 101).   But in ch. 9 “the ends of political society” who goes further to suggest that of all the natural freedoms and rights we have in the s. of nature “the enjoyment of it [such right] is very uncertain, and constantly exposed to the invasion of others” (s.123).  Furthermore, he speaks of human beings as “the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice” (123), of mankind as “being but in an ill condition” (s.127),  and of “the corruption and vitiousness of degenerate men” (s.128).  And thus “the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure” (123).   The state “is full of fears and continual dangers”… (s.124). 

Some commentators speak of the 2 different versions of the state of nature in Locke, that given in chapter 2 and that in chapter 9, seeing chapter 9 as the one that Locke is really serious about.  But really we are dealing with 2 different historical periods here.  Since a Lockean society leads to expansion and to multiplication of needs and desires, it will inevitably encounter cultural “others” in the sense noted above, and since it leads over time to a class-divided society, it makes sense that the “state of nature” over time will become a much more conflicted one.  From Locke’s perspective the society will encounter others who behave like wild animals who have lost their moral reason and fallen out of the moral community.  From the perspective of the others, they will encounter expansionist Lockean settlers who lay unjust claim to land that is not available to them, and who do not recognize the autonomy of other cultural/political communities.  Within the Lockean society itself, it will encounter (eventually—although not in Locke’s time), “others” who do not necessarily operate according to the Lockean paradigm  and who become a potential threat to the stability of the social order—as we have had in the 19^th and 20^th century working class movements, and the first and second wave of the feminist movements.

Hence Locke’s society is fraught with others who may be hostile to the orientations of property-seeking, driven individuals.  Eventually these propertied individuals will be forced to defend themselves from the others and it is for this reason that the political community is created.  Its chief end is the preservation of the property of these individuals (s.124).  It is these individuals who form the community and the government to preserve their interests and orientations.  Just as the original pre-political moral community turns out to be peculiar to a certain group, so the political community that is formed to preserve that moral community turns out to be particular and exclusive.  The property-owners form a political community to collectively preserve their individual private properties from hostile outsiders (and potentially hostile insiders), as well as to regulate their conduct more clearly amongst themselves.

Stages—difference between forming a community and forming a government

The first stage into a political community is not to choose a government but to form oneself into a body politic (chap. 8) or “political society” (87) or “civil society” (87)  “common-wealth” (s.133).  “make themselves into one body with a power to act as one body”.  This body operates by majority consent (s.95-99) in the second stage, the forming of a government.  But originally to form a body politic (a political community of private-property holders) requires the consent of every member of the community, and this must be an express consent, not a tacit one.  (like a citizenship declaration).  By this they turn themselves from a multitude of separate individuals into a cohesive community that can act with one will, according to majority vote. (“a power to act as one body” (s.96))

s.95.  “The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it” (my emphasis).

So individuals agree to be governed by majority vote.  Give up all power necessary to the ends for which the community is set up, to the majority of the community.

Tacit consent

If do not give express consent, then might live passively under the laws of that community but not be a member of it.  Can’t be a “citizen” of it in the sense of taking an active part in its political affairs.  (s. 119,122).  This doctrine of tacit consent is significant in Locke given the existence of the working class and women.  Tacit consent does not just apply to foreigners passing through, as he implies, but to all those disenfranchised members of the community, those who do not fit into the Lockean framework in one way or another but who neverthless are conditions of the functioning of the community.  By tacit consent they are obliged to “obedience to the laws of that government…whether his possession be of land…or a lodging only for a week”(s. 119) my emphasis.  As long as one “enjoys” the privileges and protections of the society, one must submit to its administration.  Tacit consent is a central doctrine in a society where there are so many internal others, or where new others will be brought into the society, as with Natives and so on, who will not give express consent or who are not really given the opportunity to do so.

The movement out of s. of n. into political community is a significant one—from state of nature into political community (prior to establishment of govt)—because of its permanent character, and because it is governed by majority vote.  It is key to Locke’s doctrine of limited government because it allows one to change the legislative (the formal place of government), while not devolving all the way back to the state of nature (see. S.225-26—the difference between revolution and “rebellion”).  [it is furthermore notable that this intermediary stage between s. of n. and govt. does not exist in Hobbes alongside the absence of a right of revolution].  While it may be possible to change a government, one cannot get so easily out of the community of private property holders to whom one is now beholden and subject.  If the government oversteps its boundaries and gets rejected by the community, one does not go back to the state of nature.  One goes back to this community who will then choose a new government.  One is “perpetually and indispensibly obliged to be, and remain unalterably subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state of nature” (s121, see also s.243).

However, in being part of the community one is not yet under government.  That is the second stage.  The community which now acts as one body politic under the direction of the majority, must choose where to situate the legislative power.  Legislative power is defined as “That, which has a right to direct how the force of the common-wealth shall be employed for preserving the community and the members of it” (143).  First act of the majority is to establish wherein the legislative power of the community will lie.  This is the “supreme authority” in the sense that it is the only power which can make laws to which we are all subject and we owe our obedience to those laws.  It is “sacred and unalterable” once established (s.134).  (but can be changed in extreme cases by revolution)

Determines the “form” of the community

-a democracy—legislative power rests in the hands of the community as a whole

-oligarchy—lies in hands of a few select men and their heirs or successors (significant in its difference from Aristotle—not seen as rule of wealthy and not distinguished from aristocracy—indicates that this is a society based on wealth accumulation and so no need to distinguish between the rule of the wealthy and the rule of the best)

-monarchy—in the hands of one man

-mixed forms—temporarily place power in one body and then reverts again to people to decide where to place it.  (our system of representative democracy I think would fit here)

In spite of it being a “supreme authority” it is a limited authority and here is where we find Locke’s doctrine of limited govt. and his historical significance in relationship to Hobbes.  The following specific limits:

1.      sovereign subject to the laws of nature and must make laws in accordance with these (vs. Hobbes—prudential advice).  The point of civil society is the preservation of property; it is the basis of our joining together.  The power of the legislature is thus not arbitary (pp. 70-71).  The sovereign takes over from individuals the carrying out of the law of nature (preservation of self and others).  Since in the state of nature we don’t have arbitrary power over ourselves—can’t harm others or commit suicide—so government cannot have arbitrary power—can’t harm others or take away their life or property (with the exception of those who attack you or the state).  It is impossible for members to create an arbitrary power.  The purpose of laws of nature is to enable private property and thereby self-preservation.  So the law-maker also has this as its purpose.  If the legislature goes beyond this then individuals have “an appeal to heaven”.  The legislature “can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to  impoverish the subjects” (71). (right of revolution rests in this higher laws—right to oppose—“appeal to heaven”.  But revolution only happens if majority are abused in an ongoing manner. (see below on Locke’s rejection of politics)

2.      must rule by promulgated standing laws (rule of law).  Different from Hobbes—sovereign above the law and not part of the contract.  If sovereign acts against the law, can hold him to account.  This is one of the conditions on giving up power to the sovereign.  Otherwise citizens would be in a state of nature in relationship to the legislature and executive, but the whole point of the contract was to get out of a state of nature.  Also this rule of law avoids revolution, or having to change the legislature, because it is a way of settling disputes between citizens and sovereigns in a peaceful way.  Seems however to presuppose an independent judiciary (“known, authorized judges”) although Locke does not mention this as a separate power alongside executive and legislative.  Laws also clarify things for citizens and thus keep peace amongst them.

3.      Can’t take away any part of a man’s property without his consent (eg. Taxes.  This is because the preservation of property is the end of govt.  Consent here equals consent of the majority, or their representatives chosen by them.

4.      Legislature can’t transfer power of law-making to another body.  Power is derived from the people and they hold it on trust

5.      Separation of executive and legislative powers (less likely to abuse power and not necessary for legislative always to be sitting)

Overall govt is contrained on all sides by the higher natural law.  If govt oversteps its bounds and individuals cannot find redress from within, then they can “appeal to heaven”.  If a majority find themselves in this situation and find it serious enough then they are warranted in rejecting the existing legislature and taking power back into the hands of the community and investing it again in a new legislature.  There is no going back to a state of nature.

The significance of the doctrine of limited government for the Lockean political society

Historically Locke’s theory of limited govt. constitutes his greatest influence in political thought, in spite of more critical interpretations of him.  He is seen to constitute a real alternative to the idea of the Hobbesian absolute sovereign.

But beyond this historical importance what we can more generally say about the doctrine of limited government and the nature of the business of government in Locke’s thought is what kind of society it indicates.  For it shows overall the extreme lack of interest in politics as a distinct activity.  The whole point of creating society and government is to divest oneself of the political power one has in the state of nature—the power to know, interpret, and apply the laws of nature (s. 71).  The first act of the political society is to create a legislature and thereby to get rid of political power as something held in their hands.  The problem with this power is not just that it has its various ambiguities and leads to conflicts, but that it is burdensome and dangerous to have it in one’s own hands, and the conflicts involved in it remaining at the individual level will interfere with the pursuit of property.  The whole point is to get rid of this power, to delegate it first to the community and then have the community delegate it to a body of individuals to do the work of politics for them—to make the laws known (write them down), to interpret the laws, and to apply the laws so that one doesn’t have the danger of doing so oneself.

The fact is that the real business of life here is one’s own private existence, the business of working hard and generating wealth and of being interfered with as little as possible in doing this.  Government’s job is to facilitate this.

Locke says so very explicitly when he says that the purpose of politics is the preservation of property.  It stands outside of the real business of life and is subservient thereto.  It is purely instrumental to private accumulation.

He furthermore speaks of the purpose of politics as that of “umpire” (s.212, and ?).  It only comes into play when we happen to clash in our private activities.  I.e. govt. is not about democracy in the sense of self-government, it is not about sharing in a common set of values (Aristotle)—although it presupposes a common set of values.  It is about mediating our private lives, about preventing war.  Hence we can see also how Locke’s philosophy represents a dominant understanding of politics in the society of today.

The lack of interest in politics as a specific mode of activity is also indicated in Locke’s statements about the power of the people to appeal outside government to “heaven” in cases of injustice. S.177 if one’s rights to one’s property or that of one’s ancestors has been denied, and one wants to seek redress, one had better be sure that it “is worth the trouble and cost of the appeal”.  One should not trouble one’s neighbour without a cause.

S.225. he goes on in the same vein regarding the power of the society to change the legislature is it oversteps its bounds.  This would not be done lightly because it is so much trouble for the people.  Only “if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected” (s.225).  

The idea that govt. is held on “trust” is a further indication of this divestment of the activity of politics.  We put these powers in the hands of the legislative so that they can do the work for us and we trust them to do it for the purposes for which it is created.  We do this because we do not want to do it.  We pay them to do this dirty business for us.  But if they go against these purposes and start to use it for their own interests, then we can take it back again and give it to a more responsible party.

The only major political actions that are undertaken by the political community as a whole include:  1) to decide where the legislative power will rest (as a monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy) (13?).  2) To effectively decide whether the govt. is overstepping its bounds and whether it should be deposed and replaced is the decision of the majority (s.168). [hence to give power away, and then to take it back when necessary in extreme cases and immediately to divest oneself of it again in a new legislature]. and 3) to decide whether taxation or any taking of a part of one’s property is acceptable (s.140).  This is the extent of one’s actual participation in politics in most cases.  (except for those who engage in politics as a career or a calling and in this case they get their own private rewards for so doing.  The Aristotelian idea of politics as the higher end for human beings per se is definitively rejected here)

But this raises another issue.  Even these limited political actions by the society as a whole are determined not by individuals per se but by the majority.  If my vote goes against that of the majority in terms of where to invest the legislative power, whether the existing legislature is corrupt and should be overthrown and replaced, or whether we should have this system of taxation, or the right to expropriate property etc., then my vote loses out.  These political decisions are the decisions of the majority of the community.  Why is Locke not then worried about the tyranny of the majority?

Answer:  This is a fairly homogenous community of property-owners who have expressly consented to be part of this community and hence who share the same value system and orientation and interests.  There is a harmony of interest or a class interest going on, and hence one does not have to worry that the decisions of “the people” who make up this community will be radically opposed to one’s own interests.  One can more or less trust this community not to decide anything too radical.  Locke’s main concern at this historical juncture is not to protect the individual from the community, but to protect the community of property holders from a rapacious government.

But secondly, majority rule is quick and efficient—no debates and deliberations and creation of consensus.  The point is to delegate the power in an efficient way and this also speaks to his lack of interest in politics.  Voting is not politics in a larger sense of the term, as in the Greek sense of deliberation.  Furthermore, the majority will ensure a fair degree of stability on the question of revolution because it is only if the majority are abused and disillusioned that a revolution will happen.  Revolution is to be avoided as much as possible because it is so disruptive to the real business of living.

(Lecture notes)

It is difficult to comprehend the implications of Locke’s thought for traditional women, who took on the job of the family and the private sphere generally in his thought, because it is not explicit in the text.  Nevertheless it is significant and important to do so because Locke’s thought so much reflects the self-consciousness of contemporary liberal societies, and as such had an enormous impact on the 2^nd wave of the feminist movement that sought to integrate women into the public on Lockean terms.  To understand this we have to analyze Locke’s views on women and citizenship generally and what they imply.

Locke’s statements about the family in chapter six of The Second Treatise, “Paternal Power,” have as their primary motivating impetus the desire to distinguish political power clearly from that of paternal or patriarchal power.  That is, the whole chapter is motivated by his fight with Filmer and the other monarchists who wanted to sustain the patriarchal privileges of the monarch according to the model of political power as deriving from the original paternal power of Adam.  On the contrary, Locke and his friends wanted to assert the idea that individuals are born free and only consent to political power for their own interests, and as thus are all equal to one another.  Hence Locke’s main concern in this chapter is not with the family or women per se. 

The break that Locke seeks to establish between a patriarchal system and a social contract one is violent in his thought.  That is, he wants radically to reject a traditional community rooted in an old conception of nature with a fixed hierarchy and an absence of choice or freedom.  Instead he wants to conceive of a society as a community of free and equal individuals who come together by choice and institute political power as instrumental to the achievement of their own ends.  In making this move, which is the move that we have inherited with our modern liberal democracies, he must thus radically reject the nature of the old political community, including its conception of the individual as part of a larger organic whole, the sense of identity one gets from this, the connection to nature, the hierarchy, the dependence vs. the independence, the sense of community vs. the atomism, the attachment to tradition and custom vs. the idea of a community founded on abstract reason. We are talking about nothing less than the establishment of a whole new order (the same has been true for Hobbes).

The fact that this transition is violent in Locke’s thought, that it involves the radical rejection of earlier traditional forms of political community, becomes clear in his particularly narrow and instrumental understanding of the family, as expressed in chap. 6 and even more so in chapter 7.  And this is because he is construing the family according to the narrow functionality of his understanding of the new political community, and the exclusion from it of all that is traditional and “patriarchal”. 

The sole function of the family, including the relationship between husband and wife, is to generate new individuals for the preservation of the species and to bring them up to be free and independent in Locke’s sense, to leave the family and be actively productive, and begin new families of their own (65).  The obligation of the parent to the child lasts only until the child can fend for himself (79).  Love and tenderness are significant only in terms of their capacity to temper the power of the parents so that educative practices entail persuasion as much as force (63).  “Conjugal society” consists “chiefly in such a communion and right in one another’s bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation” (78).  To the extent that it goes beyond this and “draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of interests too” is only because these are instrumental “to uniting the parents in their tasks and are necessary to help them care for their offspring (78).  The real end of marriage is summarized as “the continuation of the species,” which requires a long period of partnership due to the long period of dependency of children in the human species.  The whole undertaking of the parents is the task of “reproduction” in order to generate “productive” citizens who will then be formally independent of the family of origin.  They are a stage on the way to the telos of the Lockean citizen.

This rejection of the past and embracing of the narrow and instrumental understanding of self and community in Locke’s thought thus accounts for what is left out in his understanding of the family.  The idea of love as itself an end in the family, or of companionship between men and women as such an end, has no recognition.  The idea of sex as being part of this or an expression of this also has no recognition—sex is only for procreation.  The attention to embodied needs as an end in themselves has no recognition—the fact of our deeper imbeddedness in nature and the attention paid to that in terms of eating, sleeping, aesthetics, cleanliness, clothing, sex, affection.  The idea of attachment as an end in itself is also not considered.  The experience of a communal identity in the family is not recognized, because it is too associated with the paternal community.  The idea of interdependence and mutual need and functionally differentiated roles (man, woman) which characterized the traditional community and the traditional family is also not recognized. (men and women are equal partners who are “assisting” one another.)  The only thing that is recognized that is outside the Lockean self is the immaturity of the child, who is not yet rational.  But this is only temporary—the child will eventually reach this age and parents are stewards of them until then.  The idea of our common vulnerability is not really recognized or the idea that parents should be looked after when they’re elderly (also part of traditional societies).

This historical contextualization of Locke’s argument—as a polemic against patriarchal power–helps to explain why Locke cannot talk in broader terms about the work of traditional women, why he cannot even recognize it, because he is restricting everything to the terms of the new political community.   In fact, however, historically women would have done much more than what Locke officially acknowledges here.  Indeed, given that Locke’s subject is so ascetic and narrow and one-sided and repressed, it seems that the labour of traditional women in the family is even more significant than it would have been in a traditional community where these other needs are integrated into the public sphere (needs of connection to nature, belonging, mutual need, sense of community, sense of past/tradition).  Now, the one-sided Lockean self must find the compensation for his one-sidedness in the private realm of the family.  This is why the Lockean conception of the family gave way historically to the “sentimentalized” family in the history of political thought (Rousseau etc.).  Let us look more closely at this idea of women as playing the role of compensation.

If the mature member of the Lockean moral community is rational, efficient, hard-working, active, independent, “moral” in the narrow Lockean sense, industrious, serious, and useful, then he can only be so if woman sustains this identity by carrying his implicit need for unity, compassion, forgiveness, dependence, softness, frivolity, love, sex, food, aesthetic satisfaction, recognition, and general emotional neediness, by looking after this neediness and having it projected upon her.  In other words, the other within the Lockean self, which Locke himself doesn’t want to acknowledge (except in a very narrow sense in relationship to children) must be dealt with.  It can be projected onto Natives and Africans and the working class as cultural others.  Or it can be projected onto women within the Lockean society.  (they are irrational, emotional, needy, frivolous, sensuous, soft, dependent, wasteful, etc., and thus the Lockean male can sustain the sense of himself against another).  But, more importantly in the case of women, to the extent that he cannot simply repress and project this other, it is women in the family who must look after the many needs that go unacknowledged by the Lockean self, but which must be met anyway.  It is she who cooks him meals, who decorates the house, who quiets the children, who listens to his problems, who buys and mends and irons his clothes.  It is she with whom he has sex, who is tender and affectionate, who provides him with love and a sense of unity when he comes home from the competitive and individualistic public world, who is compassionate and forgiving towards his faults and failures.  It is she who meets the needs that are implicitly denied in the public self and in the Lockean philosophy as a whole.  It is she who acknowledges and tends to his real, embodied self.  In short, she does the “labour” of the other that de Beauvoir talks about in Second Sex. 

The harsh repressiveness and denial that has been necessary in order to undertake the violent shift from a traditional to a modern society has meant that women have shouldered the emotional and physical burden of this new modern subject.  (Pateman,  the social contract is a sexual contract).  They must do the work of attending to what has been denied.

(to the extent that the white man is not as damaged in this society as the native has been, must be explained by the fact that women have done this work of making modern individuals feel all right, in spite of what they must constantly do to themselves.  Traditional women have not acted like Lockeans but have focused on the material finite needs of the individual as the real task at hand)

Implications of this for liberal feminism:

-a rebellion against the sentimentalized family of the 1950s that accompanied the Lockean citizen.  A total rejection of this family as contrived and patriarchal—designed to keep women in their place—tied to lots of pathologies (Salinger, Friedan, Women’s Room, Far from Heaven, The Hours, …..).  Partly a rebellion against the contrived nature of this version of femininity.  Partly a rebellion against the excessive weight that is put on traditional women in a Lockean world, a weight that is not even really recognized.

–a total rejection of this version of the family.  And a Lockean embracing of the public world and pursuit of individual self-interest and self-development as the pathway to freedom.  (influence of de Beauvoir’s idea of transcendence and her indictment of “immanent” activities here—the disembodied self becomes the model of freedom and the embodied self is to be left behind and rejected). 

-problem with this—1) participate with Locke in a denial or eclipse of the real work/labour that is being done in the family.  Denigrate and degrade traditional women and see them as merely oppressed.

2)     an uncritical embracing (in case of liberal feminism) of male roles as the pathway to freedom—competitive, utilitarian (and presupposing somebody else to do the work of women).

Outcome of this:

Women in the public world.  But now she (or in case of progressive families both parents)  must do both jobs—the public and the private.  But because the private isn’t adequately recognized anymore (partly under the influence of liberal feminism), (the work of traditional women is not recognized), the public realm hasn’t accommodated the fact that parents (women) are doing both.  Hence the tremendous pressure on families today.  Need to recognize the work of traditional women in order to understand what’s required to keep the public world functioning (e.g., Marx—the reproduction of the working class).

-Hobbes is important in outlining for us the concept of appetitive freedom, a new abstract equality, and the dynamics of insecurity and competition that emerge from this, and in illustrating how this is bound up both with the new scientific world view, and a new value system that rejects the elitism of the ancients and reifies ordinary life

However, he also comes up with political conclusions that are unacceptable, both in his own time and now.

Historically, Locke’s positive political thought is far more influential than Hobbes’s in the development of liberal democracies.  How so?

1.      His moral orientation towards hard work and accumulation continue to be decisive in North America and Britain, particularly in an era of neo-conservatism.  Ie. The Protestant Work Ethic.  Furthermore, the basis of this moral orientation is fundamentally religious in character, as we can show.  This religious orientation continues to operate at the core of modern capitalism, yet without any consciousness of it, even though it has now become at least partially irrational and problematic.

2.      His doctrine of private property and the ethics behind it are foundational to capitalist societies, and articulate the logic through which a formal doctrine of equality, which characterizes Hobbes and Locke and modern societies, turns in fact into a justification for a new kind of inequality based largely on economic class.

3.      Relatedly, his thinking formed a significant part of the justification of the exclusion of the working class from political rights historically, and parts of this thinking had to be overcome in theorizing the extension of the franchise after the industrial revolution and the rise of the working class movement in the 19^th century.  Other forms of disenfranchisement of the working class, such as the lack of recognition of a justification for working class rights, like forming unions, are also present in his thought and have reemerged today in an era of neo-conservatism, along the same lines of logic.

4.      His justification for private property logically entails the dispossession of the aboriginal peoples and the justification of African slavery.  It was in line with actual arguments being made by settlers in the new world in order to argue for the absence of aboriginal title to the land so that the land would be free for white settlers—terre nullius.  Furthermore, Locke’s argument itself was used historically in this way.  His doctrine of property is essentially expansionist and racist, and thus deeply imbedded in the colonial history of North America.

5.      His instrumental understanding of the nuclear family and the tacit subordination of the sphere of “reproduction” to the sphere of “production,” implicit in his value system, has had huge implications for the subordination of women, right up to and beyond the 2^nd wave of the women’s movement, which was largely Lockean in character and which still has not come to grips with the work that traditional women did and which is now constituting the double day of labour in working families. 

6.      The instrumental relationship to nature central to his political philosophy continues to be bound up with contemporary capitalist societies even as it is increasingly being brought into question.

Thus Locke’s political philosophy, while not completely dominant, continues to remain fundamental to our current system, and marks our history dramatically. 

The foundation of all of these features of Locke’s thought, which differentiate him from Hobbes, is his articulation of a new morality upon which to found the modern political community. 

Locke is not writing 2^nd Treatise explicitly against Hobbes, although it has historically been taken in terms of its relationship thereto, but against Filmer and an absolute, authoritarian govt.

            -Locke’s connection to the Whigs

            -difference between patriarchal conception of political authority and the fraternal conception of the social contract tradition

                        -includes Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and other modern thinkers

                        -medeival society patriarachal in sense of an absolute ruling authority divined by God—people born into that relationship to the authority as the son is to the father and it continues throughout their life

                        -Aristotle and Plato also writing in a patriarchal context in the sense that the laws and customs of the society are taken as given, the individual is born into them and is taught them by the elders.  There is no questioning of that tradition or of customs.  Even though Plato with Socrates is engaging in rational questioning it is still in order to find a rational basis to support the customary morality, not to create an altogether new political community.

The social contract thinkers are different in the sense that they begin from the idea of the individual as broken from community and as free.  Political authority is thus not something given to which they must automatically submit, the way a son submits to a father, but is something to which we must give our consent.    The idea of the contract symbolizes this notion that political authority now requires the consent of the individual in order to be legitimate.  This puts all (male anyway) individuals on an equal footing, for all must find their own reasons to give their consent.  And the political community is generated and reproduced through that ongoing process of consent.

Note: Freud symbolizes this shift from a patriarchal to a fraternal understanding of political authority in Totem and Taboo, when he portrays the sons in the primal horde as killing the father and then establishing their own community.

In Hobbes the consent is the consent to legitimize an absolute sovereign in order to get out of the horrible state of nature.  Hence Hobbes has much in common with the absolutism of the feudal regimes.  However it is different because of the way in which it conceives the legitimation of this regime, and thus he stands firmly in the social contract tradition.

Locke embarks on a new trajectory from Hobbes within the social contract tradition. Instead of saying that the state of nature is a state of war, he posits a natural morality, which implies a moral community that predates political society.  The alternative is not between an absolute sovereign and a horrible anarchic state of nature.  Rather the natural state is one of moral community, with a moral law to govern it that people rationally and naturally observe.  It is only to correct the deficiencies in this community that govt. will be instituted.  And it is only when “bad” people go against the moral law that there is war.  The natural state is one of peace.  It is a pre-political moral community where individuals have the capacity to live in harmony with one another.

It is this morality that stands at the basis of his possibility to make an argument for a natural right to private property, and it is this difference that stands at the root of his argument for limited govt..  These arguments for a right to property and for limited government are his two most famous political doctrines.  And this is fundamentally significant because it paints the logic for any theory of democracy, however limited, in the modern tradition.  In order to escape Hobbes’s conclusions, that modern individual freedom requires an authoritarian sovereign, one must be able to make the argument that individuals are moral in a substantial sense, that they have the capacity to be self-governing, and that the return to a state of nature is thus not the worst possible thing imaginable.  It is conceivable to overthrow a dictatorial regime and institute a form of government that is more expressive of and responsive to a community of moral citizens.

Hence Locke, in his own time, was progressive, in the sense that he went against the argument of absolute monarchy and of patriarchal law, in constructing his argument against Filmer in the Second Treatise.  From our historical vantage point, of course, he was extraordinarly limited in many of his ideas and it is because of the extremely narrow and ascetic nature of his moral conception that this was the case.  Subsequent thinkers like Rousseau, Kant and Hegel reconstituted and broadened his idea of morality and hence escape some of the fundamental problems that we find in Locke, and offer a much more substantial basis for the modern democratic community.  Yet Locke constitutes the historical marking point for the idea that a modern political community must be founded on a new moral constellation.

Hence let us look in more detail at the particular idea of morality in Locke’s Second Treatise, from which the rest of his arguments and the character of his political community follow.

Locke portrays the natural law that is the basis of this moral community in ch. 2 of 2^nd Treatise.  Depicts the state of nature with the 2 premises of equality and freedom that Hobbes begins from.  Differs dramatically when he goes on to state that (p.6)—para. 6. “though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of` licence:  though man in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself……see rest.

-4 main articles:

1.      do not harm others

2.      preserve oneself

3.      do what you can to preserve mankind when your own preservation “comes not in competition”

4.      do not destroy any creature in one’s possession “but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it” (i.e. human use and consumption).  An argument against wanton destructiveness and waste.

On what does Locke base this natural morality?  It is unclear.  Locke works from within the same ontology as Hobbes (appetitive).  Hobbes found only prudence.   Locke wants to say that the laws of nature are not mere prudential advice about how to survive, but are actually moral obligations that come from God and that we are obliged to obey.  If we do not, then we are bad or evil, not merely unwise.  Yet how does he accomplish this?

What is clear from this statement is that this is a religious conception, which differentiates it fundamentally from Hobbes’s conception of our natural state.  We understand ourselves fundamentally as in a relationship to God and as bound to follow out his purposes for us.  It is not a question of mere Instinct, but of obligation.  It is a genuinely moral conception in this sense.  But not only that, it is Christian.  Dunn describes Locke’s state of nature as “saturated with Christian assumptions,” right down to the very assertion that we are all born free and equal.

What is particularly peculiar about Locke’s assertion of a religious law governing us at our most fundamental level is that it is paired with an empirical ontology.  Locke’s most important philosophical essay, An Essay on Human Understanding, is famous today for it’s statement that the human mind if originally a tabula rasa, a blank slate which acquires knowledge only through experience (just like Hobbes).  Yet at the same time he is positing a natural law doctrine.

For Locke, it is “reason” which “is that law” and “teaches all mankind, who will but consult it”.  But Hobbes had reached a different conclusion.

(According to Dunn, Locke was never able to work out this inconsistency in his own thought.  His attempts to do so in the Essay and in the essay “the Reasonableness of the Christian Religion” are both failures.  He seemed to think that most people could understand natural law through reason, although many would need coercive force to obey it.  This has been used by many commentators like Macpherson and Strauss to argue that Locke is really Hobbes in disguise, and that he’s not serious about his own morality.  But I take Dunn’s stance that it is simply a conviction that Locke could not logically work out from within the framework of an empiricist psychology.  Hence it is highly significant that Rousseau and the others later seek to ground morality in a deductive manner, by showing the limits of empirical knowledge and locating morality on the other side of that limit).

At any rate, we can safely say that this is a Christian idea of the moral community that Locke’s political philosophy is grounded upon.  Furthermore, as we analyze the meaning of the natural law in practice, as it is logically developed in the next chapters, we can see that is in fact a Puritan Christian orientation that he is espousing.

But then why should we care about it at all, from our vantage point today, since most of us would not accept this?  Because it is this moral orientation that is central in the historical development of the kind of society we live in today, and which, I would argue, is still operative at an unconscious level in this society.

What we can see notably at the beginning in this moral community is that there is a truncation of the Greek idea of a higher life.  Rather the end of life becomes merely self-preservation.

-theoretically allows for the infinite expansion of this category of self-preservation to mean limitless accumulation.  No natural limit on self-preservation—can be interpreted to mean the more and more you have the better you are preserving yourself. (vs. the Greeks you just meet your needs in order to go forth into the public sphere).  In Locke’s thought this is of course borne out as we shall see in the analysis of chap. 5.

We have looked at Rousseau’s argument for the moral self, and Kant’s argument for the moral self.  This week and next week we will explore Hegel’s argument for the moral self as we encounter it in Philosophy of Right.

Hegel takes quite a different strategy than the other two.  Rousseau and Kant (following Rousseau) seek to show what is presupposed by the empirical approach—an active self or a self as the source of the categories that must also be a unified self—in order to show the limits of empiricism and make a space philosophically where we can comprehend the moral self to reside.  Hegel on the other hand takes up a strategy of “immanent critique”.  He takes up the more limited standpoint of empiricism and its concept of freedom, and tries to show logically from within that standpoint how it meets its own limit (through experience) and it necessarily must expand itself and incorporate a larger concept of self and freedom in order to make sense of itself.  Hence the argument is not made from the outside, as a challenge, but emerges from within.  (immanent as indwelling).  Furthermore it seeks to incorporate the more limited perspective within the larger emerging perspective, so it is not a case of refuting something and leaving it behind, but seeing its limitations from within, and expanding it. 

This is what we encounter when we examine the section on property and the shift into morality.  Hegel is trying to get to Kant’s and Rousseau’s conclusions by a different path.

Some background on the book:

-Hegel’s positive political thought

-philosophy of “Right”—Recht.  Means right not only in the sense of what is enshrined and established as rights (positive law), but also what is right in the normative sense

–a theory of human freedom.  Hegel’s starting point is the “concept” or “notion” of freedom.  Starts with the most abstract conception of the human will or human freedom (akin to the Lockean conception), and its enshrinement as “Abstract Right”, and unfolds it logically until we get to his fully developed conception at the end of the book in “ethical life.”  The middle section is “morality” which is akin to Kantian philosophy, and which is a higher conception than Locke’s.  Hence Hegel seeks to put Locke and Kant together in terms of their conceptions of freedom and go beyond them to what he considers to be a more fully developed (communal) conception

-terminology:  “the universal”—what is right, what is true, what is enshrined, the basic principles of a society and how they are embodied (as laws and institutions)

-“the particular”—what is peculiar to the individual.  My particular desires.  My particular characteristics—female, ethnicity, age, tastes, etc.

Let’s look in more detail then at this initial section on “abstract right” and Hegel’s argument for, and critique of, a self that expresses its freedom chiefly in private property.

-historically, the modern concept of freedom or will emerges with the Romans, according to Hegel, and this is one of the historical bases of the text.  This is the first society that bases itself on a concept of the individual as something distinct from the community, on the individual as a bearer of rights.  But the concept of the individual is very abstract, bare “personhood.”  That is, what is recognized is nothing particular about the person—what context they come from, what their desires are—but only the fact that they’re a universal subject, a rights-bearer (affinity with Hobbes’ and Locke’s conception of the subject).  Existentially, this is the individual who has torn themselves free from the bonds of a traditional community, and their roots in nature, who has become capable intellectually of abstracting from every aspect of their individuality and their nature.  Hence the other concept here that abstract right refers to is “abstract ego”.  The ego is abstract in precisely this sense of its departure from the pre-modern subjectivity.  Freedom thus starts out as a negative and abstract concept—freedom from.  I am no longer determined by my community, the customs of my community, my social role in that community.  Rather I have reflected away from all of these things, I have turned into myself and made myself the author of my actions.  I am a modern self-reflective individual.  I don’t just follow customs and traditions but think of myself as independent and refer to myself as the source of authority.  Furthermore, it is based upon this capacity and this movement that I am a rights bearer, that I am accorded any worth, and recognized as an individual.  Thus “Abstract Right” is the first positive legal expression of individual freedom.  It is the basis of much of our legal code (much of which descends from the Romans).  And it is the basis of most neo-conservative politics today, as we shall see.

If I reflect into myself in this way, what do I find in myself?  This is precisely the Hobbesian standpoint (and implicitly also much of Locke’s).  I find my appetites and my aversions.  The substance of my freedom (if it is no longer the community and my social role), is my desires.  What do I do with these desires?  I express them.  Why does this end up entailing a right to property?

Locke justifies property in terms of self-preservation.  While anthropologically incorrect, from the standpoint of the new abstract ego, this actually makes sense.  If I am torn free from the community, I must make my way in the world on my own.  I am independent, and free.  But I am also now not taken care of.  My fate becomes separate from the fate of the community.  So I must take things from nature in order to survive.  I must build my own basis of survival.  As Hegel says in the section on possession, the abstract ego doesn’t at this point have any relationships or obligations towards others, beyond that of mutual respect.  “Be a person and respect others as persons.”

Hegel goes beyond and renders more philosophical this account of Locke’s.  Private property is justified not in terms of self-preservation (for we could always go back to a communal orientation to survive).  Rather private property is the *first* expression of my freedom.  It is the most primitive expression of my freedom.  But what drives the will forward towards taking things, and exchanging things, and labouring on things (all aspects or manifestations of the concept of property), is not some innate need per se to have things or to be free but because if we think of ourselves now as the real truth of the world, and not nature and the community and the universe, then the world from which we have abstracted ourselves seems to threaten that new sense of certainty that we are the truth. For the world confronts it as an apparently independent object, making my ego appear as a subjective truth.  I must show the world that I am the truth of the world.  The whole motivation for the movement of logic in the section on Abstract Right is driven by this conviction that I am the truth of things and that the world is there *for me*.  Or as Locke says, God put the earth there for humans to subdue, to take from it.  Animals are to serve man and his self-preservation.  Everything is to be directed by our will. [various statements from American Republicans.  The whole totally utilitarian perspective on the environment]

So the will must in Hegel’s terminology “objectify” its certainty of itself in nature.  It must show itself as the power over nature and things.    “it struggles to lift itself above this restriction and to give itself reality, or in other words to claim that external world as its own” (39).  The first expression of this is “possession”.  (the simplest expression of property—merely taking things and having them).

Contract is a higher expression of property than possession and use, or as Hegel says, is more adequate to “the concept of freedom.”  (see text).

–we’ve looked at Hegel’s argument for property, and his arguments for the kinds of rights that emerge when we move towards a more embodied conception of the self (in morality).  This already shows the connection to politics.  However in the third section of philosophy of right, “Ethical Life,” Hegel is outlining a system where things are not just focused on the subject of morality or of property rights but of a subject situated in a community where there is a harmony between the rights and orientations of the individual on the one hand, and the laws and institutions of the society on the other.

–we need to look more clearly particularly at what is entailed for Hegel as an institutional reflection of the moral standpoint.

–firstly, because Hegel is advocating a right of property this turns out to be a kind of self-interested market society, where people are pursuing their own needs and interests amongst others who are the same.  This is a society based on property.  Institutionally what accompanies this is an “Administration of justice” or a set of laws and courts and police to enforce the laws.  However, we’re still dealing with the level of abstract right at this point in the text.  (a righting of wrongs).

–the extent to which Hegel goes beyond such a conception in his vision of the political community, which reflects the more developed moral standpoint, can be found in the section on “police” or public authority and corporation.

–the police or public authority for Hegel are necessary because in freely pursuing our property rights we impact others (e.g. 232—drive a car—cause pollution, dump wastes into water on your property—affects larger water system)—this reflects the reality that we are not just abstract and isolated, but embodied and interdependent.  We must have “regulation” and police control of such things.  The state has the right to regulate us in our use of property because of our ties to/impacts on others (233)

–secondly, because there are certain universal needs of members of the community, it makes more sense for the public authority to undertake certain projects, such as street-lighting, bridge-building, roads, public health, fixing of prices of basic goods. (235/36)

            –he’s advocating a middle way between market and society:  “The individual must have a right to work for his bread as he pleases, but the public also has a right to insist that  essential tasks shall be properly done.  Both points of view must be satisfied, and freedom of trade should not be such as to jeopardize the general good.”(236A)

–beyond this, because civil society is formally a realm open to all (abstract right, formal equality), individuals however enter it from different positions (family capital etc.), and so have different chances.  It is not an even playing field.  Therefore civil society has obligations to individuals, in terms of a public education system (239), a safety net (241).  The latter in particular is necessary because of the contingencies of market societs, that they can reduce individuals to poverty.  –they can/will spiral down, and be deprived of other possibilities, education, skills acquisition, health services, administration of justice.  These serves must be publicly provided, at least for the poor.

–we need the standpoint of morality to see this—from the standpoint of abstract right the background factors that affect individuals’ chances are invisible—don’t come into view.  Need the whole picture of the individual and don’t get this til the standpoint of morality.  A free person in a finite condition.

–so seeing the possibility of the creation of a “rabble” or a pauper class is only possible with the standpoint of morality.  And to understand how/why this would happen without judging the individuals negatively at the level of individual character (rather see it is a social phenomenon).  The “rabble” for Hegel is not just poverty but a culture of poverty wherein there is a rejection of the values of civil society because it doesn’t work for them.—honesty, hard work, law-abidingness, respect for property, etcetera.-

            –society must take responsibility for this endemic possibility (endemic to market societies), and provide public services for health and education and minimum subsistence so that this culture of poverty does not develop

–242—argument against a charitable system “private sympathy and accidental occurrence of knowledge and charitable disposition” (242)

            –state should provide in a a universal manner to all thos in distress and in a way that targets the cause of distress and helps people back on their feet

–243-44

            –generally in this section Hegel is able to portray the larger context of a society that roots itself fundamentally in the principle of private property

            –poverty and disaffection on the one hand, and extreme concentration of wealth in a few hands and gross luxury

–caused by on the one hand the drive to multiply needs and meet needs in a manner that makes the most profit—this leads to techniques of mass production and thus to des-skilled, alienated labour which is routine, uninteresting, often badly paid, and makes individuals very dependent on the fluctuations of the market (no skills to take elsewhere)

–on the other hand, the ups and downs of the business cycle—dependent oln trade, international conditions, etcetera—leads to insecurity and unemployment—longterm unemployment leads to a culture of poverty, resentment of the rich, rejection of the society, frivolous and idle

–the concentration of wealth is developed further by marx—private property and the market turn into capitalism—need capital in order to get going—enterprises are expansionist—need more capital—number of capitalists shrinks

–besides public schooling and other welfare services, Hegel’s main response to this problem is the corporation

–last week—examined Hegel’s idea of property rights as rooted in an abstract conception of the self, and as entailing a movement somewhat beyond this purely abstract conception towards the idea of a moral self

–In the position of Abstract Right the only thing that was recognized and enshrined was the idea of the self as Abstract Ego.  The fact that the substance of one’s freedom comes from one’s desires and needs and particularity generally is not recognized.  Indeed, that this is a contradiction, that the freedom of the Abstract Ego is “at once the sublime and the trivial,” does not become apparent until the experience of wrong.  Through wrong the abstract ego is forced to reflect on itself and become more self-conscious.  It becomes aware that it is a universal self in a finite body and a particular context.  Furthermore, this finite body and its particular context could drive it to go against the universal aspect of itself.  It becomes aware of both sides of itself, and of the potential contradiction or antagonism between them.  Hence instead of the idea of the self as abstract ego we get a larger conception of the self as rational and universal on the one side, and as finite and particular on the other.  Furthermore, we have the idea that we must act freely and universally within the context of this embodied self.  It must take responsibility for itself as such.  In today’s terms, Hegel is moving towards the idea of a situated freedom and an embodied self. 

Of significance is the position of Hobbes in relation to Hegel.  Hobbes begins from the position of abstract ego or the idea of the individual as free and self-determining according to his/her particular interests—seeing all individuals as essentially the same apart from the substance of their actual desires.  [[Doesn’t look at the individual in terms of moral self-responsibility or social context.]]  And he also sees logically that this leads to the position of “wrong” (although properly speaking for Hobbes there is no wrong).  If we start only from the position of individuals as free, and where the substance of their freedom is merely particularistic desires, then logically people will violate each others freedom and go against each other.  However for Hobbes the solution to this is an absolute sovereign.  He never gets beyond the position of the empirical individual.  He never gets beyond the position of wrong.  And in order to deal with it he must severely restrict freedom in the figure of the absolute sovereign.  It’s only when we get the idea of the individual as morally self-determining or self-governing, as taking responsibility for themselves in their finitude, that we can go beyond the thought of Hobbes, or beyond the idea of dictatorship politically. 

In a certain sense Locke gets beyond Hobbes or gets to a kind of position of morality in his theory of private property and of a society based upon it, in the sense that he understood that a natural right to private property presupposed a capacity for morality, and in the sense that politically he derives from this a position of limited government.  However there are a couple of problems with Locke’s position.  First, he merely asserts this according to the Christian doctrine of natural law.  He never succeeded in philosophically justifying this morality.  Second, to the extent that there is a rationality to Locke’s morality it never gets beyond the position of the empirical self and its expression in private property (expansion, survival, commodious living, efficiency—all the categories of Hobbes).   That is, it never really adopts the idea of an abstract ego as imbedded in a finite context that would really condition the way that freedom is expressed in the world.  He never really absorbs the reality of the free self as embodied and finite.  Always for him the idea of the self is as standing over against nature and subduing it.  Really coming to terms with the embodied reality of the self (which the standpoint of morality gets us to in Hegel), is anathema to Locke.  Rather our embodiedness—our cultural particularities, our embeddedness in nature, our finitude, our vulnerability—all this is foisted onto others in Locke’s thought, or projected. (women, natives, blacks, the working class). Hence although Locke seems to be at Hegel’s standpoint he is not.  The most important part of the shift to morality—the two-sided idea of the self, the awareness of its contradiction—is absent in Locke.

While Locke does not advance to the position of morality, Rousseau and Kant do.  For both have a concept of the self as dual and divided, as free and self-determining but in the context of a particular finite body.  This is the case at the outset of the idea of morality.  However, in how this concept unfolds Hegel will distinguish himself from both of them.   (both play it out by repressing one side.  Hegel wants us to find freedom in and through our particularity and context—or he’s moving towards the idea of a situated freedom. )

The major difference between the abstract ego of private property and the moral self at the beginning of the morality section is that the latter is more self-reflective and self-aware, and hence has a much expanded conception of itself.  It is driven by the idea that it is willing itself as a universal self, in the context of a finite body and world.  It is no longer an abstract self.  This leads to a whole different set of rights—rights of the embodied self (or of a free self that is embodied), that cannot properly be derived from the position of abstract right.  This constitutes the real significance and advance of Hegel’s section on morality.

Out of the section on property we have developed the right to possession, to stake out territory, to use and labour on one’s property, to sell one’s labour, to make contracts, to punishment, and to an impartial judge.  Out of the section on morality we find a right to be recognized in terms of one’s purposes, the right not to be held responsible for things one didn’t intend, a right to pursue one’s particular motivations or happiness (out of which develops the right to general welfare or wellbeing, which includes a right of distress), and a right of conscience.  [it will also turn out to be the basis for a right to welfare, to corporate membership and representation (class-based or group based rights)—but this doesn’t become evident until the section on ethical life].  All of these latter rights emerge from the will’s struggle to come to terms with itself as a universal in a finite context.

First, the right to be recognized in terms of purpose or intention.  This emerge’s from the self’s attempt to deal with the finite content of its will in its passions and inclinations.  Instead of merely allowing itself to be bounced around by its passions, it reflects on them and only is determined by that into which it self-consciously puts itself.  Even the need to eat must not be seen as an absolute compusion.  The will must self-consciously put itself into eating; it must decide to eat in order to satisfy its hunger, or to stop itself from dying.  (anorexics are struggling with this aspect of embodiedness—an attempt to exert control over it).

It also seeks to come to terms with its situatedness in the world by only taking responsibility for those things which it intended in acting according to purpose.  For the reality is that it acts in a world that is governed by external necessity, and its actions will “become the prey of external forces which attach to something totally different from what it is explicitly and drive it on to alien and distant consequences.” (131).  Furthermore, a condition of its situatedness is that its knowledge of the situation is necessarily limited.  So it will not take responsibility for aspects of which it was not aware (Oedipus example).

Furthermore, it demands recognition from others for its intention or purpose.  (there is a right to recognition tied to right of intention).  For the reality is that it acts in a world of others (its context again).  Hence it is vulnerable to or dependent upon them.  For my right of intention to be realized I must expect that others can distinguish between what I intended to do and what I didn’t. 

To come to terms with its particular self or the finite aspect of itself the moral self must not only seek recognition of its intention in the abstract, but of its particular intention or motivation in carrying out the act—e.g. why did I commit murder?  Even if I murder for the sake of pleasure, my particular motivation is that of pleasure.  Also for ends of great worth there must be a particular motivation.  But the only particular motivation can be found in its own embodiment, “in needs, inclinations, passions, opinions, fancies” (123).  In other words, for its happiness or welfare  (Aristotle here).  Hence its broader purpose is to further its own welfare or happiness.

            Here we get the idea of the individual’s right to welfare.  It emerges out of their reality as an embodied individual.  It is one of the ultimate manifestations of my reality as an embodied individual.  I have a right to basic wellbeing.

The right to welfare puts a limit on property rights.  I still have property rights but under the perspective of morality they are not absolute.  They cannot go so far as to deny me my particular well-being.  If the competitive world of private property, which ends up entailing a disparity between rich and poor, ends up denying me the needs of my physical self (as happened on a widespread level in the industrial revolution and th Great Depression), then property rights must be limited by the right of welfare.  (Hegel’s example of the right to steal bread is clear but a bit simple.  At a more developed or concrete level it means the right of the state to intervene in the market for the sake of the welfare of the people.  Or it means the right generally of society to limit property rights to ensure that people’s basic needs are met.  This is the “right of distress”).  Right and welfare go together necessarily.  It is because I am a rights bearer that one should care about my welfare.  But my abstract right to property is meaningless if I am in a context where I am starving and the means to my survival are denied me.  Hence Hegel tries to combine Locke and utilitarianism.  One cannot violate property rights purely for the sake of maximizing utility or the happiness of the greatest number.  But one can limit property for the sake of basic wellbeing. 

This puts me into a greater commonality with my fellow humans.  Before the level of human community was very limited—mutual respect as property-holders, making contracts with one another—only see one another as persons or abstract ego.  Now I understand that we are all particular, embodied individuals seeking happiness or wellbeing.  Furthermore, as embodied, we are all subject to distress, to the possibility of falling ill, having accidents, being unhappy, getting old, in short any kind of difficulty that can afflict the mortal person.  Hence we get a sense of our common vulnerability, and this is wherein people find a bond that enables them the will to put limits on the market—for the sake of human protection.

The right of welfare and the right to property together turn out to be inseparable.  Any attempt to realize individual freedom through merely property or merely utility, is one-sided.  There emerges here the notion of larger good, or common good, that right and welfare are aspects of.  It is this unified conception of the good that has emerged and that is now the true object or purpose of the moral will.

Here we have really got to the standpoint of Rousseau and Kant.  The will’s job is to will what is good.  To will the universal, to will the general will.

But what is the good?  So far it is very abstract, consisting in what is right and what is in the universal welfare.  Hegel rejects Kant’s solution, the specification of the good by means of the moral law, as “an empty formalism” which ends up justifying any content at all (135R).  Kant is too abstract.  The moral will, rather, to act according to its conception of the good, finds it within, as conscience (a more embodied conception of the good).  Conscience “establishes the particular and is the determining and decisive element” (136).  In other words, it goes back to its own particularity to determine the good.  Again, Hegel is moving towards an embodied conception of the good here.  He is in fact closer to Rousseau than he is to Kant in terms of his positive conception of conscience.  Only conscience in this embodied sense (conscience as conviction) can will anything.

Conscience is the highest realization of the idea of freedom so far.  It is higher than the expression of self in property.  It is higher than the pursuit of one’s own happiness.  It combines both of these principles in a higher concept. 

But again, then, we encounter the contradiction that the standpoint of morality is always dealing with—that it is universal but that it must will from within its finite condition in a finite world.  It has before itself the idea of an objective good according to which it must act, but it determines that good from within itself according to its own particular judgement.  So, while it asserts that it is willing the good, it can’t know this.  It may really be willing evil.

The positive aspect of conscience that get here, the right of conscience, is “the absolute claim of the subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from itself what right and duty are, and to recognize nothing except what it thus knows to be good.” (136Notes).  In other words, the rights enshrined in a state, in order truly to be right and to have real existence, must have the recognition of the citizens in their conscience.  They cannot simply be abided by in an enslaved manner.  This is Hegel’s idea of mutual recognition (between state and individual—both are dependent on the other for their existence).

The negative aspect is the subjective standpoint of conscience.  It does not have the ultimate right to determine the good.  For the good is something objective, not subjective.  The opinion of conscience  is not enough.  There is a “right of objectivity,” or a right of society and history and laws and institutions (and philosophy) to determine what the good is.  Conscience must defer to this.  This doesn’t mean that conscience isn’t responsible for determining the good.  It simply means that it must be affirmed by the society around it.

Also, it means that where there are laws and institutions in place that have been established to be rational, (by Hegel’s philosophy, and by history, and the people), conscience must defer to these as well.  But the ultimate establishment of what is right is found in philosophy—Hegel’s philosophy—which affirms what has been enshrined in history as good.  His unfolding of the idea of freedom makes manifest what the good is.  Conscience can question doctrines of private property and utilitarianism.  But it will ultimately have to reestablish them again because they are right, as Hegel has shown.  They are expressions of the true and free content of the will.

So far the substance of the good has been shown to be the rights of private property, the right of punishment, the right to an impartial judge, the rights of self-determination in the context of one’s embodiedness, including the right only to be responsible for what is rationally intended, the right to pursue one’s own happiness or welfare, the obligation towards the welfare of others, balanced by the requirement to respect the right of others in return, and finally the right of conscience—the right to determine the good or recognize the good from within oneself.

Hegel’s vindication and critique of conscience shows that to realize ourselves as free, we need not just to act autonomously, but to have that autonomy enshrined in laws and institutions around us, to have it vindicated by society, to have our conscience recognized.  We may, in times of social and political breakdown, be forced to retreat into ourselves, as Socrates, the Stoics, Christ, etcetera, have done.  But we can never be satisfied with this.  We need to live in a community that enshrines the right and upholds it.  Only there can our conscience find satisfaction.  The unity of the subjective with the objective.  Only there can we find peace.  We need to see justice done in the world.  This idea of unity is “ethical life”.  This is higher concept of freedom than conscience.  It involves the idea of mutual recognition between individual and society, or individual and state.  Hegel has transcended the monological, individualistic standpoint of Rousseau and Kant.

-hegel as Aristotelian—conscience must look to the world in order to see what is right and true (what has been enshrined historyically).  People will over time tend to enshrine what is rational.  But there can be pathology and breakdown.  Philosophy is the ultimate vindication of what’s right and true as it has been enshrined historically.