Democracy Is Best

John Locke on Social and Political Government. Addressing the question of which is best.

[Class Notes for Philosophy 1 Students; Exam III]

A Glimpse of Locke and his Influence:

No other individual influenced the author of the Declaration of Independence more than Unitarian John Locke (1632-1704). He was a British philosopher who rejected the idea that Kings had a divine right to rule. Instead, Locke argued that people are the source of power, not kings. 

Locke argued that people are born with certain "natural" or "inalienable" rights. These include the right to "life, liberty and property." Government did not give people these rights; rather they are born with them and as such, no government can take them away. 

According to Locke, people formed governments to protect their rights, which he called a "social contract." People agreed to obey the government and in return, government had the responsibility to protect peoples' natural rights.

Things to Keep in Mind:

• Human beings, while born in perfect liberty and equality, are prompted by reason and nature to cooperate and organize into political bodies.
• Human beings have a natural right to life and property.
• Locke argues that democracy best suits his theory of human nature.

 Democracy Is Best

• The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it; [this law] teaches all man kind, that being equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions (p. 454).
• The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and therefore declaring by word or action a settled design upon another man's life (p. 454).
• And here are the plain differences between the state of Nature and the state of war, respectively: one the state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; and the other is a state of enmity, malice, violence, and mutual destruction.
• A political society is a society where every one of the members resigns it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it (p. 455)
• A civil society are formed by those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish offenders. These people are all in a civil society together (p. 455)
• But those [in comparison with the constituents of the civil society] who have no such common appeal are still in the state of Nature (p. 455)
• Locke maintains that absolute monarchy is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government. 
• Men being by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.
• Every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the determination of the majority.
• Locke defines property as the conglomeration of a person's life, liberties, and estates.
• The great and chief purpose of men uniting into commonwealths is the preservation of their property; to which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting:

1. There wants an established, settled, know law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them
2. There wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law.
3. There wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and give to it due execution.

• Locke clearly recognizes the formation of a commonwealth as a good system of governance