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John Locke: Social Contract Versus Political Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Jeremy Waldron
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Extract

In the Second Treatise, John Locke presents two stories about the development of political society: (1) the dramatic story of the state of nature and social contract; and (2) a more gradualist account of the evolution of political society “by an insensible change” out of the family group. The relation between these two accounts is analyzed in order to deal with familiar objections about the historical truth and internal consistency of contract theory. It is argued that Locke regarded story (2) as the historically accurate one, but that he believed historical events needed moral interpretation. Story (1) represents a moral framework or template to be used as a basis for understanding the implications — for political obligation and political legitimacy — of story (2). Even if the whole course of the evolution of political institutions out of prepolitical society cannot be seen as a single intentional or consensual process, still individual steps in that process can be analyzed and evaluated in contractualist terms. The task of political judgment is to infer the rights and obligations of politics from this representation of political development as an overlapping series of consensual events.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , Winter 1989 , pp. 3 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1989

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References

Notes

1. Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974), pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

2. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 13.Google Scholar

3. See Kant, Immanuel, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice’,” in Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 78.Google Scholar See also Waldron, Jeremy, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1987): 134 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).Google Scholar All parenthetical references in the text are to this work, by treatise and paragraph number.

5. Hume, David, “Of the Original Contract” in his Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), p. 471.Google Scholar

6. For other similar lines of argument, see Locke, Two Treatises, II, 23, 93, 131, 135–36, 138–39, 149, 163–64, 168 and 222.

7. Nozick, , Anarchy, State and Utopia, p. ix.Google Scholar

8. For the importance of this theme in early modern political thought, see Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), esp. chaps. 7–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Waldron, Jeremy, Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man (London: Methuen, 1987), pp. 11–13.Google Scholar

9. This is recognized by Peter Laslett in the footnote to II, 74 of his edition of the Two Treatises. See also Schochet, G., “The Family and the Origins of the State in Locke's Political Philosophy”, in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, J. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

10. Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Filmer's critique, see ‘Patriarcha’ and other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer, ed. Laslett, P. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949).Google Scholar

11. Hume, , “Of the Original Contract,” p. 470.Google Scholar

12. In the introduction to his edition of the Two Treatises Peter Laslett remarks that “Locke may be said to have done more than anyone else to found the study of comparative anthropology …” (p. 98n.); similarly Dunn, , Political Thought of John Locke, p. 46n.Google Scholar, describes him as “in fact one of the best-informed students in the Europe of his time of variations in the moral social, political and religious practices on non-European countries.”

13. See Cox, R. H., Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 95 ff.Google Scholar for a discussion of this example.

14. The same is true of the enterprise Locke imagined colonists embarking on when he produced the ‘Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina’ in The Works of John Locke, 9th ed. (London: T. Longman and others, 1794), Volume 9Google Scholar; and also of the examples of political “beginnings” in Arendt's, Hannahfamous study of this issue inOn Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973).Google Scholar See generally the useful discussion in O'connor, D. J., John Locke (New York: Dover Books, 1967), pp. 206 ff.Google Scholar

15. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), chap. 13, pp. 187–88.Google Scholar

16. Dunn, , Political Thought of John Locke, pp. 106–107.Google Scholar

17. Ibid.

18. Hume, , “Of the Original Contract,” pp. 470–71.Google Scholar

19. Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Yolton, J. W. (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1961), 4. 16. sec. 11 (p. 258).Google Scholar

20. Ashcraft, Richard, “Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?” American Political Science Review (1968), p. 899.Google ScholarAshcraft's, reference is to Locke Journal for 6–1004 1677.Google Scholar

21. Dunn, , Political Thought of John Locke, p. 97.Google Scholar

22. I am grateful to a referee for The Review of Politics for pressing this question.

23. Cf. II, 191. There is a discussion of Locke's “hapless and clumsy treatment” of this issue in Dunn, , Political Thought in John Locke, pp. 131–43.Google Scholar

24. I am grateful to the editor and referees of this journal for their criticisms, and also to Robert Goodin, Leslie Green, Richard Gunn, Desmond King, John Holloway, Sheldon Leader, Richard Milin, Onora O'Neill, John Robertson, Susan Sterett, and Jack Tweedie for their comments and suggestions at seminars in Oxford, Edinburgh, and Essex where earlier versions of this essay were presented.