Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:31:26.196Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Locke and the Nature of Political Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2015

Shannon Hoff
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , Winter 2015 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government and Letter concerning Toleration, ed. Shapiro, Ian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 123–24Google Scholar, §57. Henceforth all references to the Two Treatises, with both page and section numbers, will be given in the body of the paper.

2 Pitkin, Hanna, “Obligation and Consent—II,” American Political Science Review 60, no. 1 (March 1966): 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Locke's text has a “genuinely philosophic significance, transcending the proximate circumstances of [its] production,” to borrow Myers's phrase, but to absorb that significance requires discerning how it might relate to our contexts and to the conceptions of human social reality that have developed in the meantime (Myers, Peter C., Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998], 15–16Google Scholar).

4 Locke identifies the question as not empirical or historical but moral. See Ashcraft, Richard, “Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?,” American Political Science Review 62, no. 3 (September 1968): 898–915CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 As Ruth W. Grant writes, “man's natural sociality and family structure do not imply political authority. . . . The fact that men are born into preexisting social and political groups does not mean that they have a preexisting duty to obey the authorities within those groups” (Grant, “Locke's Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism,” Journal of Politics 50, no. 1 [February 1988]: 50Google Scholar).

6 Zuckert, Michael P., Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 6–7Google Scholar. John Dunn, similarly, calls it “a jural structure, never a moral inventory of an existing historical situation” (Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968], 113Google Scholar). Ross J. Corbett calls it “a mythos containing a logos” concerning a “juridical relationship” (Corbett, The Lockean Commonwealth [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009], 121Google Scholar). A. John Simmons writes that “in Locke the primary point of the state of nature is . . . to describe a certain moral condition of man” (Simmons, “‘Denisons’ and ‘Aliens’: Locke's Problem of Political Consent,” Social Theory and Practice 24, no. 2 [Summer 1998]: 463Google Scholar). The notions of natural right and the state of nature are conceptually quite simple, involving a basic truth about what it is to be a human individual—that one cannot evade one's freedom. For a discussion of the different approaches to the idea of a “state of nature,” see Eggers, Daniel, “Does Status Matter? The Contradictions in Locke's Account of the State of Nature,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 95, no. 1 (2013): 87–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 There are, of course, other irreducible aspects of the existence of human beings. As Zuckert notes, Locke accepts “many of the claims of our contemporary communitarians about the social rootedness of humanity. He varies from them chiefly in reading differently the structure of the self and taking more seriously the problem of authority that follows therefrom” (Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 7).

8 As Peter C. Myers argues, “Locke's account of the state of nature begins with a resolution or analysis of political society into its simple constituents,” but continues by investigating not just them but “their characteristic courses of development within particular environmental conditions” (Myers, Star and Compass, 108). There is a difference between the “theoretical individualism that reveals the native self,” on the one hand, and “the ordinary historical development of that self in response to the promptings of its natural condition,” on the other (ibid.). Zuckert similarly observes that Locke does not begin by calling attention to his ultimate destination in Zuckert, Michael, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 248Google Scholar.

9 See Hegel, G. W. F., Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; and Fichte, J. G., Foundations of Natural Right, trans. Baur, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar. Rather than being at odds with these later philosophical resources, Locke's philosophy importantly prefigures them, and they provide the linguistic and philosophical resources with which this “prefigurement” can be discerned. Andrzej Rapaczynski argues that in “tying autonomy to the process of appropriation and production, Locke, like Hegel and Marx . . . , made autonomy into a dynamic and nonformalistic concept related to the daily pursuits of modern human beings” (Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987], 124Google ScholarPubMed).

10 This developmental account of human individuals is supported by other writings by Locke: for instance, where he associates the highest form of freedom of “the intellectual nature” (i.e., of human beings) with the development of the capacity to suspend desire and subject our possible actions to “a fair examination” (Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding [Oxford: Clarendon, 1975], 47Google Scholar) or with the development of the capacity to be determined by what is good (ibid., 46), or where he associates freedom with the development of the capacity to follow reason alone (Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education [Mineola: Dover, 2007], 33Google Scholar). Care for ourselves and for this capacity in us is “the necessary foundation of our liberty” (Locke, Essay, 51).

11 Grant suggests that “the opposite of Locke's political individualism, however, is not community, but . . . the idea that there is a natural or divinely ordained hierarchy among [people]. Lockean individualism therefore is not incompatible with the recognition of the importance of communal ties, family associations, and social norms” (Grant, “Locke's Political Anthropology,” 43).

12 Raymond Polin writes that “the characteristic of that equal power of freedom between men is that it does not manifest itself in society in foro interno, but that it presents external forms, it affects the existence of the others. . . . Property (as Hegel later explicitly explained) is the external manifestation of freedom . . . its very concrete existence for others” (Polin, “John Locke's Conception of Freedom,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John W. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985], 6Google Scholar).

13 Rapaczynski argues that “labor appropriates nature and makes it a ‘part’ of man because it ‘spiritualizes’ the objects and makes them into an objective extension of the human person” (Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics, 189). Appropriation “differs from mere use and consumption” insofar as it is a “higher function . . . in terms of which humanity is defined” (ibid., 189–90). Myers, similarly, argues that “the particular action of appropriating represents the employment and manifestation of one's freedom to create or enlarge a visible, tangible, more-or-less enduring domain. Thus the Lockean political ethic, with the property right as its centerpiece, is far less ‘bourgeois’ or spiritless than some critics suppose” (Myers, Star and Compass, 193).

14 Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, 7.

15 C. B. Macpherson suspects that Locke puts little restraint on the acquisition of property, but the analysis here could be used to show that political limitation of acquisition could be consistent with Locke's account (Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962], 194–262Google Scholar). Locke observes that “in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions” (§50, 121). James Tully argues that the spirit of the natural law is defeated by the introduction of money, and entrance into political society redresses this defeat (Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980]Google Scholar).

16 In using the term “recognition,” I am intentionally alluding to the political philosophies of Fichte and Hegel, who argue that free activity relies for its existence on others acknowledging the individual as free and as entitled to a domain in which to enact itself. I take Fichte and Hegel to be developing a way of thinking the basic elements of which were already available in Locke. See Hegel, G. W. F., “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness,” in Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; and J. G. Fichte, Foundations, §§3–4.

17 Others also say yes to us by developing the capacity for freedom in us when we are children. This form of recognition also enables the person to be free, but it is recognition more particularly of the child's potential to be a free being. See especially Second Treatise, §§52–76.

18 Jay Lampert makes a similar argument, using Locke, Fichte, and Hegel to show that “the more thoroughly property works its way through the social structure, the more the categories of property have to be overcome in other forms of social relations” (Lampert, “Locke, Fichte, and Hegel on the Right to Property,” in Hegel and the Tradition, ed. Baur, Michael and Russon, John [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997], 41–42Google Scholar).

19 As Ashcraft writes, “the moral state of Lockean man is one of capabilities. . . . All men . . . possess the capacity to be” rational and free (Ashcraft, “Locke's State of Nature,” 908).

20 Corbett nicely captures this tension when he observes that “the lack of any natural hierarchy among human beings means government can arise only by consent, yet the authority that can be created in this way is not equal to the challenges of government” (Corbett, Lockean Commonwealth, 21).

21 As Peter Josephson remarks, we would hardly want to form a society with or be beholden to irrational people. Uniting in a body politic functions well if consent itself is reasoned, and thus prudent politics oriented to the development of reasonable individuals plays a role in the construction and development of societies (Josephson, The Great Art of Government: Locke's Use of Consent [Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002], 10Google Scholar). Similarly, Nathan Tarcov argues that “consent as the source of political duties must be rational; it must be to such conditions as a free and rational creature would consent to. Where such conditions do not exist, no apparent formal or empirical consent is valid as constituting obligations” (Tarcov, Locke's Education for Liberty [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], 7Google Scholar). Gillian Brown writes that “consent usually appears in affiliation with knowledge and experience: as in the tandem concepts of informed consent and the age of consent. Consent would seem to become representative of agency only in conjunction with will and knowledge that the self does not invariably possess” (Brown, Gillian, The Consent of the Governed [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001], 18Google Scholar).

22 On the other hand, “nobody doubts but an express consent of any man entering into any society, makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that government” (152, §119).

23 This distinction is alluded to in the work of some commentators, such as Josephson, who observes that “understanding how Locke combines principle with practice or necessity is the single greatest difficulty in understanding his political theory comprehensively. Locke attempts to resolve these difficulties . . . through a medium which is both right and prudent. That medium is consent itself. In Locke's hands consent becomes an instrument by which reason or prudence may construct and shape the life of the public” (Josephson, Great Art, 3).

24 The new “Lockean doctrine,” as Pitkin argues, may be “regarded as a new interpretation of consent theory, what we may call the doctrine of hypothetical consent. . . . Legitimate government is government which deserves consent.” Further, “traditional consent theory is defective, for it directs such a man's attention to the wrong place. It teaches him to look at himself (for his own consent) or at the people around him (for theirs), rather than at the merits of government” (Pitkin, “Obligation and Consent—II,” 40). It is important to add here that the “merits of government” should include facilitation of the capacity of people to consent in fact or actually, or to withhold consent and criticize the structures that cultivate them as such. That is, “hypothetical consent” should also be oriented toward the goal of “actual consent.” Josephson makes this addition to Pitkin's account, arguing that “Locke's treatment of consent is not meant to be taken merely hypothetically”; rather, Locke is “serious about building an effective republican democracy” in which “representative government reinforces the habit of consent to the rule of law itself” (Josephson, Great Art, 16). I side here with those scholars of Locke, such as Pitkin, Grant, Dunn, Myers, Tarcov, Josephson, and Martin Seliger, who do not think that empirical acts of consent are actually required in order to legitimate government, but who view consent either as an ideal that a given politically authoritative body can reflect in its very structure (e.g., Pitkin) and/or as a goal at which such a body aims (e.g., Josephson). Other scholars, such as Simmons, Julian Franklin, Paul Russell, Willmoore Kendall, John Plamenatz, and Frank Snare, believe that legitimate government for Locke requires that consent be performed at some determinate point by individual members of society.

25 Myers argues that “the delicate task of Locke's political philosophy is to . . . [secure] the indispensable condition of government by the rational consent of the governed by promoting the broad promulgation of this moderated, popularized reason” (Myers, Star and Compass, 25). He holds that “the possibility of liberal government is ultimately contingent upon the performance of the morally formative institutions of civil society” (ibid., 180). Josephson argues that the coercive and educative work of the executive is “bound by a concern for consent,” and that “Locke's project of education is explicitly directed at developing the capacity for rational consent” (Josephson, Great Art, 231). People must “be educated to consent to what is just and reasonable . . . persuaded to accept rules” (ibid., 277).

26 It is common for commentators to complain about Locke's lack of clarity with regard to the issue of consent. Dunn, for instance, identifies “an indubitable lacuna” here (Dunn, Political Thought, 134); Simmons develops an account of consent that he thinks “a consent theorist such as Locke should embrace” (Simmons, “‘Denisons’ and Aliens,'” 167); Josephson asserts that “Locke deliberately makes the difference between the two kinds of consent [viz., explicit and tacit] obscure” (Josephson, Great Art, 156).

27 Grant, “Locke's Political Anthropology,” 52.

28 John Zvesper claims that “Locke's argument in his Treatises on Government is that his suggested political arrangements are not merely advisable, but that they are the only ones to which it is naturally possible for me to consent” (Zvesper, “The Utility of Consent in John Locke's Political Philosophy,” Political Studies 21 [1984]: 60Google Scholar).

29 Here I take myself partly to be answering to Josephson by aiming to produce “a comprehensive work which details the development of Locke's teaching of consent through the Second Treatise” (Josephson, Great Art, 8), which he claims has been lacking in scholarship that pursues a “hypothetical” approach to the issue of consent. This is a matter of discerning Locke's thoughts “concerning the cultural and political conditions most favorable to the cultivation of an ethic of rational self-government” (Myers, Star and Compass, 26).

30 Lee Ward claims that by “arguing that societal choice regarding the location of the ‘Power of making Laws’ determines the form of government, Locke firmly establishes the efficient cause of government in the consent of the majority in society. . . . When Locke identifies the ‘Constitution of the Legislative’ as the ‘first and fundamental Act of Society,’ he is referring to the active principle of constituent power, which involves the consent of the majority of society” (Ward, “Locke on Executive Power and Liberal Constitutionalism,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 38, no. 3 [September 2005]: 727Google Scholar).

31 Here I differ from John Dunn, who argues that Locke's “is a theory of how individuals become subject to political obligations and how legitimate political societies can arise. It is not in any sense whatsoever a theory of how government should be organized” (Dunn, “Consent in the Political Theory of John Locke,” Historical Journal 10, no. 2 [January 1967], 154Google Scholar).

32 Josephson argues that the work of the executive “quietly inculcate[s] reasonable customs of self-government” so as to develop “citizens who are at once civil and self-reliant,” and shows thereby that it is “bound by a concern for consent” (Josephson, Great Art, 231).

33 Corbett argues that political society must be adequate to its purposes, and if it is not then no rational creature can be presumed to have consented to it. Because legislative power is not adequate to the ends of government, then no rational creature can be presumed to have consented to a government that lacks a body with prerogative power (Corbett, Lockean Commonwealth, 82).

34 Ward argues that “the executive's authority to act contrary to the will of the people, expressed through their representatives, reflects a form of consent to constitutional government that is more fundamental than the authority of legislative institutions” (Ward, “Locke on Executive Power,” 736).

35 Robert A. Goldwin discusses the way in which a government can structure itself so as to be responsive to the authority of consent and conscience in “Locke's State of Nature in Political Society,” Western Political Quarterly 29, no. 1 (March 1976): 126–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see esp. 134–35.