John Locke: The Two Treatises Of Government

In Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, he defines his view of private property. He states that the earth belongs to all men in common,

The Second Treatise of Government provides Locke's theorizes the individual rights and involvement with the government; he categorizes them in two areas -- natural rights theory and social contract. 1.Natural state; rights which human beings are to have before government comes into being. 2.Social contact; when conditions in natural state are unsatisfactory, and there's need to develop society into functioning of central government.

In 1981, the nation was a loose confederation of states, which each operated like an independent country. The government had no judicial branch or executive officer. It lacked the authority to enforce its requests for money or troops from states. Since recently earning independence, the founders and public sought to protect the following in the Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms, the right to not be subject to unreasonable seizures or searches, the right to not be forced to quarter soldiers, the right to due process of the law, the right to a fast and public trial by jury with counsel, the right to a civil trial by jury, the right to not be subjected to excessive bail and cruel punishment, and protection of state’s rights. Current protections and responsibility of states and Americans found in the U.S. Constitution were based upon John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, the Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights.

John Locke and the founding father did not include every single right in the Constitution, however, that does not mean that a right can be claimed without the people’s consent. In the Second Treatise of Government, John Lock discusses the prerogative right that a President can claim. The prerogative right is the right of a president to “act according to discursion for the public good” . Executive Privilege is not usually an issue when the President acts in the common good of individuals because most individuals understand why the action is taken. When an action is for the public good, “the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point or questioning of prerogative whilst it is in any tolerable degree employed for the use it

The American Revolution, initiated in 1775, sought to gain sovereignty from Great Britain. Doing so would protect from the political domination Britain was pressing on the American colonists. Many of the revolutionaries and founders of the early United States government based the logic of the American Revolution on the work of 17th-Century English philosopher John Locke. He believed that all individuals possessed certain “natural rights”-such as life, liberty and the pursuit of property; and that when the ruling government violated these rights, the people had the right to revolution against their rulers. The violation of these rights is called political domination. In John Locke’s book Second Treatise of Government, he notably explains that

John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau, two philosophers with differing opinions concerning the concept of private property. Rousseau believes that from the state of nature, private property came about, naturally transcending the human situation into a civil society and at the same time acting as the starting point of inequality amongst individuals. Locke on the other hand argues that private property acts as one of the fundamental, inalienable moral rights that all humans are entitled to. Their arguments clearly differ on this basic issue. This essay will discuss how the further differences between Locke and Rousseau lead from this basic fundamental difference focusing on the acquisition of property and human rights.

John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, into a middle class family during late Renaissance England. Locke started his studies at Christ Church in Oxford. He then went into medical studies and received a medical license, which he practiced under Anthony Cooper. They became friends, and when Cooper became Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke was able to hold minor government jobs and became involved in politics. Shaftesbury steered Locke towards the views of a government whose law was fair to all, and all were under the law.

Locke thinks the same that in such cases, the inhabitant do value the land until there is no room enough for them in that space – problems with this sentence. Only in this case, people start, all in consent, distinguishing the property.

John Locke was perhaps one of the most influential political philosophers of the modern period. In the Second Treatise of Government, John Locke discusses the move from a state of nature and perfect freedom to a then governed society in which authority is given to a legislative and executive power. His major ideas included liberalism and capitalism, state of nature, state of war and the desire to protect one’s property.

Locke critisized this unequal distribution of possesions and ownership. He briefly summarizes this view by saying that:

John Locke and Karl Marx, two of the most renowned political philosophers, had many contrasting views when it came the field of political philosophy. Most notably, private property rights ranked high among the plethora of disparities between these two individuals. The main issue at hand was whether or not private property was a natural right. Locke firmly believed that private property was an inherent right, whereas Marx argued otherwise. This essay will examine the views of both Locke and Marx on the subject of private property and will render insight on whose principles appear more credible.

It’s initially the same concept. Someone who is in the state of nature, can make land their own by adding their own labor into the land. Along with the labor theory, Locke also provides us with a condition to the theory. The Lockean Proviso; this can be seen in Section 33 of the Second Treatise of Government. It says “Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as taking nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst: And the case of land and water, where there is enough for both, is perfectly the same.” (Locke, 372). This comes from Locke’s idea of self-ownership. Self-Ownership for Locke, is that belief that God owns your body, while you own your mind. Since God made you, he owns you but you have the right to your own actions, thoughts,

Besides the right to self-preservation, Locke also believed that all individuals had a natural right to property, “the labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are property his,” (pg. 128, 27). This natural right carried with it two preconditions of natural law. First, since God gave the earth to all individuals, people must be sure to leave enough property for others to have, the second

Locke believes that there are limitations on that property. Locke believes that God has given us all things richly, and that man may use those things as long as he takes what he needs. Men can have property as long as they obtained it rightfully, and as long as they use discretion. If those limitations were overlooked when the person was getting the property the property was not obtained rightfully.

The argument begins with the idea that God gave the world to all men in common, and reason so that we can make the best use of it – a precept derived from both reason and revelation. Yet, while the world may be common, for Locke it is also clear that we have property in our own person, and also in our own labour (Locke, 1980 [1689], sections 25-27). Following from this, that to which we apply our labour in turn becomes our property: By utilising our labour in removing something from the common, this object has, “by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men” (ibid, section 17). So, by picking an apple from a tree or catching a fish from a stream, I am joining to it my labour, something to which nobody else has rights to but me, and thus it becomes my own private property. Furthermore, Locke argues that by tilling and improving land, or enclosing areas of it, this too constitutes the just acquisition of property, subject to the constraint that there is as much, and as good left for others (ibid).