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Creation and Authority: The Natural Law Foundations of Locke’s Account of Parental Authority1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
John Locke occupies a central place in the contemporary philosophical literature on parental authority, and his child-centered approach has inspired a number of recognizably Lockean theories of parenthood. But unlike the best historically informed scholarship on other aspects of Locke's thought, those interested in his account of parental rights have not yet tried to understand its connection to debates of the period or to Locke's broader theory of natural law. In particular, Locke's relation to the seventeenth-century conversation about the role of generation in grounding ‘paternal power’ is not well-known. Understanding this background is interesting in itself, but more importantly, it can provide us with a deeper appreciation of what Locke is actually saying, as well as a useful vantage-point for surveying current debates about parental rights.
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Footnotes
1
Abbreviations: DC = Hobbes, De Cive; ECHU = Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding; ELN = Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature; Lev. = Hobbes, Leviathan; LNN = Pufendorf, Of the Laws of Nature and Nations (De Jure Naturae et Gentium); RWP = Grotius, Of the Rights of War and Peace (De Jure Belli ac Pacis); ST = Aquinas, Summa Theologica; STCE = Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education; WDM = Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man (De Officio Hominis et Civis); 2T = Locke, Two Treatises of Government. Spelling has been modernized.
References
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8 Unless we count this remark, which makes no mention of creation: ‘Amongst men, parents are as so many gods in regard to their children. Therefore the latter owe them an obedience, not indeed unlimited, but as extensive as that relation requires, and as great as the dependence of both upon a common superior permits’ (RWP: Prolegomena, xv).
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23 ECHU: 2.28.5-8; ELN: I; ‘Of Ethic in General,’ in Locke, Political Essays, 297-304.
24 Throughout, I use these terms, as Locke does, in a moral sense, not to be confused with the now more common scientific, descriptive sense. Such scientific laws of nature would be part of the eternal law in the scholastic vocabulary, from which we infer the natural or moral law. Locke, ELN: I, p. 82; cf. Aquinas, ST: I-II, Q. 91, 2; Q. 93, a. 5.
25 If advances in bio-engineering or artificial intelligence enabled us to design the nature of a rational being, would we then possess the rights of a creator? Locke may have been too pessimistic in assuming that we could never achieve that level of understanding. Perhaps he could have argued that, being the workmanship of God ourselves, anything we make is really God's creation as well and, therefore, still to be used only in accordance with his purposes. Admittedly, though, this move would make the argument of I.52-53 rather otiose.
26 Genesis 1:28-30; Psalms 8:5-8. Cf. 2T: I.30, 40.
27 Genesis 9:6.
28 Pace Drury, S.B. (‘John Locke: Natural Law and Innate Ideas,’ Dialogue 19 [1980], 531–45),CrossRefGoogle Scholar who maintains that ‘Locke had to abandon the Thomist view of natural law because the latter derived the law of nature from human inclinations’ (540).
29 Pace Peter Laslett's introduction and note to II.11 in his edition of the Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988).
30 Cf. Pufendorf: ‘The Law of Nature is to be drawn from man's reason flowing from the true current of that faculty, when unperverted. On which account the holy Scriptures declare it to be written in the hearts of men…. Yet here we by no means think it necessary to maintain that the general laws of nature are innate …, yet the knowledge of the Law of nature is truly and really imprinted on human minds by God, as he is the first mover and director of them…That phrase in Romans ii.15 which is urged so hardly by some authors, is certainly figurative…’ (LNN: 1.3.13).
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37 Principles of Nature, §31; ST: I, Q. 99, a. 1; Q. 101, a. 2.
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40 The point is not that our duties to children are owed to God rather than to children. For Locke, all duties owed to other human beings are ultimately owed to God. I thank an anonymous referee for encouraging me to clarify this.
41 I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting I address this.
42 Cf. Nussbaum, Martha Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, and Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2006).Google Scholar
43 Locke assumes the duty to honor bequests, but never discusses duties to the dead. For this account, see Jean Barbeyrac's notes to Pufendorf (LNN: 2.3.23, n.9).
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52 I do not imply that the above list of arguments is exhaustive.
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54 Nozick suggests Locke could not ground parental obligation in causal responsibility, because he denies that parents cause their children to exist (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 289). That is incorrect. Although parents do not create their children, they are for Locke the ‘occasions’ or ‘secondary causes’ of their children's existence (2T: I.54; II.66). As God is the ‘universal cause’ of everything, this subordinate causation must be sufficient to ground liability.
55 While we must keep in mind the differences between parental and political government, it would seem that a number of Locke's remarks on ‘The Dissolution of Government’ have application to the conditions for holding parental office.
56 Tyrrell, Patriarcha non Monarcha, ch. I, 33.
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