These are notes on the work and life of philosopher John Locke.
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Video 1-
Lecture is divided into 7 videos
Video 2 relates to Locke and his context, Video 3 relates to the Problem of Property, Video 4
discusses Locke’s Theory of Property, Video 5 on The Origin of Civil Society, Video 6 on
Government (Contract/ Consent) and Video 7 on Lockean liberalism
Locke was a contractarian
Video 2 (Locke and His Context):
Locke was born in 1632 and died in 1704; he was educated at Westminster School and Christ
Church Oxford
Locke’s father fought on behalf of the Parliamentary side during the English Civil War, and he
was rewarded with his son being able to experience a good education
It was expected that Locke would pursue a clerical career, but his interests turned towards
medicine and science; he increasingly became less engaged in religious education
1667: Locke entered the service of the Earl of Shaftesbury (a senior aristocrat); Locke became
close to Shaftesbury after being involved with the removal of a bodily abscess from the aging
Earl
Locke on slavery: racial slavery becomes justified due to the removal of humanity from black
people
Locke went on to act as an advisor/ secretary to Whig Grandee the Earl of Shaftesbury
There were monarchical tensions in England between 1678 and 1681 (embodied in the
Exclusion Crisis where there were attempts to exclude James Duke of York from succeeding his
father Charles given his religious affiliations)
After an attempt to assassinate both Charles and James, Shaftesbury fell from power and Locke
fled to Holland (where he stayed until his death in 1688)
Locke was effectively on the run from the British government who viewed the associates of
Shaftesbury as a threat to the British state (perhaps this explains why some scholars have
viewed the Two Treatises as having narrative undertones of an adventure story)
1688- William of Orange (husband of the sister of James) led the Glorious Revolution which
resulted in the retreat of James and a famous battle taking place in Ireland
With the ascension of William of Orange, Locke returned to England and, between 1690 and
1704, served as a Civil Servant/ author
Locke ought to be viewed in relation to problems surrounding Hobbes’ absolutism
Absolutism entails risk as it grants the sovereign unlimited scope and authority (the harms of
this risk were seen in England with James’ strong break from older forms of government rule)
Stuart absolutism/ taxation without representation threatened people’s property and
independence
Was Locke seeking to challenge Hobbesian absolutism? The Treatises do not explicitly link
Locke’s thoughts with the writing of Hobbes, but recent scholarship has shown that Locke was
more familiar with Hobbes than previously imagined
, Locke’s First Treatise discusses the ideas of thinker Sir Robert Filmer who wrote a famous work
entitled Patriarcha between 1679 and 1680; for Filmer, absolutism has religious authority as
political power is a gift from God to Adam (such power is subsequently inherited)
According to Filmer, all existing regimes and monarchies could trace back their authority to the
Biblical time of Adam and Noah; to challenge existing authority would be to challenge the line of
inheritance God chose for Adam and his descendants
Video 3 (Problem of Property):
If authority and rights to property/ power do not derive from religious theories around inheritance
and Adam’s succession, where do they come from?
Pufendorf (1632-94) was a German jurist who wrote the influential work De Jurae Naturae et
Gentium in 1672 (an established European text on legal practice)
Pufendorf = contemporary of Locke and Hobbes
Locke’s preoccupation with property derives from the problem of Stuart absolutism (who gets
power? Why?) and forms part of Locke’s alternative account of political society
Locke’s discussion of property also provides an answer to the problems found in the work of
thinker Grotius (I.e., “the Grotian problem”):
● Things exist in Common
● People take what they need to preserve themselves
● Taking possession of that which is common gives rise to instability (possession is
unstable as an activity)
● To overcome the instability of possession, political society and the state enforce
people’s ‘rights’ as an arbiter
● Only with the creation of political society is the move from private rights to public
rights
For Locke, there is a question of: if everything was previously held in common, how was there a
transition to private property? How do people take possession of property if all things are held in
common?
For Locke, private property had to have emerged with consent using agreements or there were
no rights to property (thus there existed a form of primitive communism)
For Filmer, there was no need for primitive communism given the ability for those of Adam’s
descendants entrusted with political power to simply give property to those they felt could hold
such power
Locke felt that there was a civil society before politics due to the prospects of owning property if
civil standards are met
Grotius- private property is based on first possession but this is a weak interpretation given the
ease with which people might secede from their property rights when they fall out with others
(I.e., they might take their territory and align with another tribe or group of people)- an example
of this problem might be if William of Orange decided to pledge allegiance to France and
declare all his property and territory to be representative of the French state; therefore, private
property is not simply possessive
For Hobbes and Pufendorf, private property is artificial as the “Public Right” is an innovation to
enforce private rights
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