Episode 22, John Locke's Political Philosophy (Part II)
The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast
Jack Symes | Andrew Horton, Oliver Marley, and Rose de Castellane
4.8 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2017
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everything you could need is on www.thepanpsycast.com! Please tweet us your thoughts at www.twitter.com/thepanpsycast. Born in Somerset, England 1632 and died in Essex, at the age of 72 in 1704, John Locke was among the most famous philosophers and political theorists of the 17th century. Locke's main political work, Two Treatise of Government, was published in anonymously in 1689. The First Treatise is a sentence-by-sentence refutation of Robert Filmer's Divine Right of Kings, whilst the Second Treatise outlines Locke's ideas for civilized society based on natural rights and contract theory. Our main focus today is the second treatise of government. Locke begins by describing the state of nature, a picture much more stable than Thomas Hobbes' state of nature that recall, is "war of every man against every man,". Locke argues that all men are created equal in the state of nature by God. He proceeds by explaining the hypothetical rise of property and civilisation, in the process explaining that the only legitimate governments are those consented to by the people. Ultimately for Locke, a government that rules without the consent of the people can ultimately be overthrown. For many, the language of the second treatise of government echoes throughout the declaration of independence. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "Bacon, Locke and Newton, I consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived". Part I. State of Nature (19:15), Part II. Property (00:05 in Part II), Part III. Civil Society (15:50 in Part II), Part IV. Further Analysis and Discussion (31:40 in Part II).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Part 2. Property. Inquiry question. How does Locke understand property and why is this significance? |
| 0:20.0 | Locke has a very why is this significance? |
| 0:26.5 | Locke has a very different idea of property than what we generally conceive of property to be today. |
| 0:33.2 | When I think of property, I think of the roof above my head, the shoes beneath the soles of my feet, |
| 0:38.2 | and the T-shirt, which is made 100% ethically, which rests upon my shoulders from the pansycast.com. But Locke thought something very different. What was Locke's idea of property |
| 0:42.4 | and how is it different from ours? Locke thought that property was an extension of yourself. |
| 0:48.3 | So if you did something and worked on, say, a piece of land, that that land became your property, but not in the way |
| 0:56.8 | that you've just said. Yeah, it means that that land basically becomes you or an extension of you, |
| 1:02.2 | and that for somebody to take away that land means that they are harming you directly in a roundabout way. |
| 1:09.4 | It all ties back into the ideas of natural rights that we |
| 1:12.5 | were talking about. Yeah, I want to step it back again just because it comes off a little bit |
| 1:16.2 | crazy in the way that you just, that's because it is a bit of a strange concept. It is a strange |
| 1:22.8 | concept, but we should start off with the first part, right? So by property, he also means your |
| 1:27.0 | person. |
| 1:28.0 | Locke gives quite a few good quotes which encapsulate his idea of property and the idea that property is your person. |
| 1:34.3 | No one having a right to that. Olly, do you want to read some of these? |
| 1:37.7 | Of course. So, the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth. |
| 1:43.8 | And not to be under the will or legislative |
| 1:45.8 | authority of men, but to be ruled only by the law of nature. The liberty of man in society is to be |
| 1:52.2 | under no legislative power except the one established by consent in the Commonwealth, and not under the |
| 1:57.8 | power of any will or under restraint from any law law except what is enacted by the legislature in accordance with its mandate. |
| 2:05.6 | This freedom from absolute arbitrary power is so necessary to man's survival, so tightly tied to it, that losing it involves losing all control over his own life. |
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