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The Plague Court Murders Library of crime classics download pdf. The ravishing one download pdf. The Return of Tarzan Tarzan Audio download pdf. The S Factor download pdf. The Shore of Women download pdf. Mary Wollstonecraft: The Rights of Women Carol Gilligan: In a Different Voice John Locke: Political Power Thomas Hobbes: Creating Leviathan John Locke: Express and Tacit Consent David Hume: The Irrelevance of Consent Jeremy Bentham: Utility as the True Foundation Michael Bakunin: Science and the People Plato: The Duty of Obedience Plato: Ruling as a Skill Immanuel Kant: Freedom and Equality Lenin: Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy Aristotle: Rule of the People and Rule of Law James Madison: The Danger of Faction Max Weber: Bureaucratic Administration Isaiah Berlin: Two Concepts of Liberty Partick Devlin: The Enforcement of Morals Hart: The Changing Sense of Morality.

John Locke: The Futility of Intolerance Jeremy Waldron: The Satanic Verses Pericles: The Democratic Citizen Aristotle: The Requirements of Citizenship Niccolo Machiavelli: The Servility of the Moderns Jeremy Bentham: Nonsense on Stilts Robert Nozick: Rights as Side-Constraints Hart: Punishment and Responsibility Every individual has an incentive to 'defect' in favour of the individually rational behaviour.

Suppose the peasants understand the structure of their situation, and so agree to refrain from cutting down trees. Then any given peasant can reason that he or she will personally increase yield by felling trees remember that clearing just one plot will not lead to significant soil erosion.

But what is true for one is true for all, and so they may each begin to clear their plots, to gain an individual advantage. Even if they make an agreement, everyone has good reason to break that agreement. Hence the collectively rational position is unstable, and individuals will tend to defect, even if they know the consequences of everyone acting that way. With this in mind, one way of thinking about Hobbes's argument is that, in the state of nature, the individually rational behaviour is to attack others for reasons we have already seen and this will lead to the state of war.

However, the Laws of Nature tell us that the state of war is not the inevitable situation for human beings because another level of behaviour—collective rationality—may also be available. If only we could somehow ascend to the level of collective rationality and obey the Laws of Nature we can live in peace, without fear. The question now is whether Hobbes believed that each person in the state of nature has a duty to obey the Laws of Nature, and if so whether the recognition of such a duty should be sufficient to motivate people to obey the Laws.

Hobbes's answer here is subtle. What he means is that we should all desire that the Laws take effect, and take them into account in our deliberations, but this does not mean that we should always obey them under all circumstances.

If other people around me are disobeying the Laws, or, as will often be the case in the state of nature, I have reasonable suspicion that they will break the Laws, then it is simply stupid and self- defeating for me to obey. If someone does obey in these circumstances then he will 'make himselfe a prey to others, and procure his certain mine' Leviathan, In the technical language of contemporary game theory, anyone acting this way is a 'sucker'! In sum, then, Hobbes's position is that we have a duty to obey the Laws of Nature when others around us are known or can reasonably be expected to be obeying them too, and so our compliance will not be exploited.

But if we are in a position of insecurity, the attempt to seek peace and act with moral virtue will lead to an individual's certain ruin and so we are permitted to 'use all the advantages of war'. The real point, then, seems to be, not exactly that moral notions have no application in the state of nature, but that the level of mutual suspicion and fear in the state of nature is so high that we can generally be excused for not obeying the law.

We should only act morally when we can be assured that those around us are doing so too, but this is so rare in the state of nature that the Laws of Nature will, in effect, almost never come into play. Hobbes sees the way out of this predicament as being the creation of a sovereign who will severely punish those who disobey the Laws. If the sovereign is effective in keeping people to the Laws, then, and only then, can no one have reasonable suspicion that others will attack.

In that case there is no longer an excuse to start an invasion. The great advantage of the state, argues Hobbes, is that it creates conditions under which people can securely follow the Laws of Nature. We should conclude this section by recalling Hobbes's account of the state of nature.

It is a state where everyone is rightly suspicious of everyone else, and this suspicion, not mere egoism or sadism, leads to a war, where people will attack for gain, safety, and reputation.

The war is self-fuelling and self-perpetuating, as reasonable suspicion of violent behaviour leads to an ever-increasing spiral of violence. As no one can be sure of retaining any possessions, few will plant or cultivate, or engage in any long-term enterprise or plan. People will spend all their time grubbing for subsistence and fighting battles. Under such circumstances there is absolutely no chance that the arts or sciences could flourish.

Our short lives would be lived without anything to make them worthwhile. His official target was the view of Sir Robert Filmer , a defender of the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings—that the king ruled with authority granted by God.

Nevertheless it is hard to deny that, at a number of points, Locke seems to be arguing with Hobbes, whose work must have been well known to him. As we shall see, comparing the two accounts of the state of nature casts light on them both.

While, as we saw, Hobbes identified the state of nature with a state of war, Locke is keen to emphasize that this is a mistake. Locke supposed that it would generally be possible to live an acceptable life even in the absence of government. Our question must be how Locke managed to draw this conclusion.

Or, in other words, how, according to Locke, does Hobbes fall into error? Let us start at the beginning. The state of nature, says Locke, is first, a state of perfect freedom; second, a state of equality; and third, bound by a Law of Nature. Verbally, of course, this sounds just like Hobbes's view, but each of these three elements is given quite a different interpretation by Locke. Hobbes's principle of equality was a claim about the mental and physical capabilities of all people.

This assertion was explicitly aimed against those, including Filmer, who accepted the feudal view of a natural hierarchy, headed by a sovereign, ruling by divine appointment.

Filmer argued that God had appointed Adam first sovereign, and contemporary sovereigns can trace their title back to God's initial grant. For Locke it is self-evident that no one naturally has a right to rule, in the sense that no one has been appointed by God for this purpose. Although Hobbes did not mean this by his assumption of equality, he would accept Locke's position here.

Hobbes thought that whoever did, in fact, exercise power over the community was, for that reason, to be recognized as its sovereign. There is, however, greater disagreement between the two on the nature and content of the Law of Nature. For Hobbes the fundamental Law of Nature was to seek peace, if others are doing so, but otherwise to use the advantages of war. This, and Hobbes's other eighteen Laws, were said to be 'theorems of reason'.

Locke, too, believes the Law of Nature to be discoverable by reason, but Locke's Law has a theological aspect absent in Hobbes's Laws. The Law, says Locke, is that no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. The reason for this, according to Locke, is that while we have no natural superiors on earth, we do have one in heaven. In other words, we are all creatures of God, his property, put on earth as his servants, 'made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure'.

Therefore 'Every one.. The Law of Nature, for Locke, is simply the idea that mankind is to be preserved as much as possible. So, Locke argues, we have a clear duty not to harm others in the state of nature except for limited purposes of self-defence , and we even have a duty to help them if we can do so without damage to ourselves. Clearly, then, Hobbes and Locke have significantly different views of the nature and content of the Laws of Nature. A still greater difference lies in their use of the term 'natural liberty'.

For Hobbes, we saw, to say that we have natural liberty is to say that it can often be entirely rational, and beyond moral criticism, to do whatever is appropriate to help secure our own survival, even if this means attacking the innocent.

Thus natural liberty, on Locke's view, is no more than the liberty to do what the Law of Nature allows. That is, we are given the liberty to do only what is morally permitted. So, for example, although Locke's Law of Nature prevents me from invading the property of others, this is in no sense a limitation of my liberty. Locke would certainly disagree with Hobbes's claim that in the state of nature everyone has a right to everything, even each others' bodies although he does accept that we have considerable rights of self-defence.

Do these disagreements between Hobbes and Locke add up to enough to establish Locke's conclusion that the state of nature need not be a state of war? Clearly it is important for Locke that even in the state of nature we have a moral duty to restrict our behaviour. Yet this, on its own, does not seem enough to show that in the state of nature fear and suspicion would not exist.

And, as Hobbes argues, fear and suspicion may be enough for the state of nature to tumble into war. To avoid this Locke requires not only that the state of nature be subject to moral assessment, but that somehow or other people will be motivated to act as the Law of Nature instructs. This suggests a strategy for resisting Hobbes's pessimistic conclusion. Hobbes argued that human beings would be driven by the search for felicity the continued satisfaction of their desires , and this, at least initially, leads them into conflict.

If Hobbes has misdescribed human motivation—if human beings, say, really are strongly altruistic—then peace might easily be achieved. This would be one route to Locke's conclusion.

Is it the route Locke takes? Locke does not explicitly put forward a theory of human motivation in the Two Treatises, but it seems clear that he did not think that human beings would automatically be motivated to follow the moral law. Indeed he comes very close to sounding like Hobbes: 'For the Law of Nature would, as all other Laws that concern Men in this World, be in vain, if there were no body that in the State of Nature, had a Power to Execute the Law and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders' Second Treatise, s.

In other words, the Law of Nature, like all laws, needs a law-enforcer. Without such an enforcer it would be empty. Unlike Hobbes, however, Locke cannot accept that the Law of Nature could be in vain: it is, after all, in Locke's view the law of God, who presumably does nothing in vain.

Therefore there must be a way of enforcing the law: somebody who has the power to enforce it. But we are all equal in the state of nature, so if anyone has such power then everyone must have it.

Therefore, Locke concludes, there must be a natural right, held by each person, to punish those who offend against the Law of Nature.

Each of us has the right to punish those who harm another's life, liberty, or property. The right to punish is not the same thing as the right of self-defence. It is the right not simply to try to prevent or ward off a particular episode of harm or damage, but to make anyone who has overstepped the Law of Nature pay for their transgression.

This 'strange doctrine' as Locke calls it, plays a very important role in the derivation of his view of the state of nature. If the Law of Nature can be enforced, then we have good reason to hope that life could be relatively peaceful. Offenders can be punished to make reparation, and to restrain and deter them, and others, from similar acts in the future: 'Each Transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much Severity as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the Offender, give him cause to repent, and terrifie others from doing the like' Second Treatise, s.

It is important that this natural right to punish is not restricted solely to the individual who suffers the wrong. If that were so, then obviously those who commit murders would go unpunished.

But, more importantly, the victim may not have sufficient strength or power to subdue, and exact retribution from, the offender. Locke therefore argues that those who break the law are a threat to us all, as they will tend to undermine our peace and safety, and so every person in the state of nature is given what Locke calls the 'Executive Power of the Law of Nature'. Locke has in mind the idea that law-abiding citizens, outraged by the offence, will band together with the victim to bring the villain to justice, and together they will have the necessary power to do this.

Locke realizes that the claim that we all have a natural right to punish offenders may seem surprising. However, in support of his view he claims that, without it, it is hard to see how the sovereign of any state can have the right to punish an alien who has not consented to the laws.

Therefore such a person cannot justly be punished, unless there is some sort of natural right to punish. In effect, the sovereign is in the state of nature with the alien, and so the sovereign's behaviour is sanctioned not by the laws of the land, but by the Executive Power of the Law of Nature. In fact we will see in the next chapter that Locke has a more obvious strategy to explain the sovereign's right: that the alien tacitly consents to the law. If the Law of Nature is enforceable, then a number of other rights can be secured, even in the state of nature.

For Locke, the most important of these is the right to private property. We can already see what the basic form of the argument must be. God put us on earth, and it would be absurd to think that he put us here to starve. But we will starve unless we can rightfully consume objects such as apples and acorns; furthermore, we will do better still if individuals can securely possess plots of land and rightfully exclude others.

For then we can cultivate the land, and be secure in our enjoyment of its products. We will look at this argument in more detail in Chapter 5. To the modern reader, Locke's continual invocation of God and God's purposes may seem an embarrassment. Surely it should be possible to consider questions of political philosophy outside a theological framework?

However, Locke also appeals to 'natural reason' in establishing the premisses of his arguments, even if he gives it a lesser role.

So, for example, he thinks it absurd, and against natural reason, to suppose that human beings may not make use of the earth without the permission of all others, for if this were the case we should starve. This alternative argument certainly seems plausible, and so some followers of Locke have been prepared to drop the theological underpinnings of his view in favour of this 'natural reason' approach.

To return to the main argument, so far the central difference between Hobbes and Locke seems to be that Locke thinks that, even in the state of nature, there is an enforceable and effective moral law, backed by the natural right of punishment, while Hobbes would be highly sceptical of this claim. We can imagine how Hobbes would reply to Locke. According to Hobbes, the only way of subduing any power is through the exercise of a greater power. But then the villain—who may well be an unreasonable person with like-minded friends—might return, armed, with forces united, to gain revenge.

Such thoughts could act as a powerful disincentive to those thinking of exercising their executive power of the law of nature. If you want to avoid unpleasantness in the future, don't get involved now. So Hobbes would probably argue that even if people did have a natural right to punish offenders, this would rarely be used with any effect unless a single, stable, authority existed: for example, within a tribe or group an acknowledged leader to adjudicate disputes and enforce judgements.

But that would already be a fledgling state. So in the state of nature, even if there were a right to punish, this would be ineffective as a means to peace. However, there is still one seemingly vital difference between Hobbes and Locke that I have not yet mentioned.

Remember that for Hobbes, one of the key factors that brought people into conflict was a natural scarcity of goods. Two people will often desire the same thing, and this will make them enemies. Locke, on the other hand, appears to make a very different assumption: nature has given things richly.

There is a natural abundance of land, and plenty of room for everyone, particularly 'in the first Ages of the World, when Men were more in danger to be lost, by wandering from their Company, in the then vast Wilderness of the Earth, than to be straitned for want of room to plant in' Second Treatise, s. Hence, Locke implies, under these conditions there is very little reason for conflict and dispute.

Most people, presumably, would rather cultivate their own plot than invade their neighbour's, and so we can expect a relatively peaceful climate and few sources of quarrel. If this is right, then peace in the state of nature is secured not only by the natural right to punish, but, equally importantly, by the fact that it would rarely have to be used. How plausible is this? Hobbes no doubt would point out that abundance of land does not rule out scarcity of finished and consumable goods.

It will often be far less trouble to take another's product by stealth, than to go to the effort of ploughing, sowing, and harvesting. Furthermore, if others have similar thoughts then I am wasting my energy by cultivating my own land, for, as Hobbes argued, whatever I will produce will end up in the hands of others.

Otherwise a few highly anti-social individuals could ruin things for everyone. Locke, indeed, comes close to admitting that the state of nature may not be as peaceful as he first supposed. After all, he has to be careful not to paint it in too idyllic tones, for then it would be very difficult to explain why we ever left it and created the state. The primary fault, Locke sees, is with the administration of justice.

It is not so much that we will squabble over goods, but that we will squabble over what justice requires. We will, in other words, disagree about the interpretation of the Law of Nature. People will disagree about whether an offence has taken place. They will disagree about its proper punishment and compensation.

And they might not have the power to exact what they believe to be its proper punishment. So the attempt to administer justice, even between the would-be law-abiding, is itself a powerful source of dispute. This Locke sees as the primary 'inconvenience' of the state of nature. The only thing that prevents serious trouble is the thought that, given initial abundance of land, disputes would be few. But Locke sees the initial abundance of land eventually turning to scarcity: not through massive population growth, but through greed and the 'invention' of money.

Prior to the existence of money no one would have any reason to take more land than is necessary for their own family's survival. If you grew more than you could use, it would simply go to waste, unless you could exchange it for something more permanent. But once money exists then such exchanges become easy, and it is possible to hoard up enormous amounts of money without the risk that it will spoil.

This gives people a reason to cultivate more land to produce goods for sale. In turn this leads to pressure on land which then, and for this reason only, thinks Locke, becomes scarce. Now Locke does not say that such scarcity introduces the Hobbesian state of war, but he recognizes that once land is in short supply and under dispute the inconveniences of the state of nature multiply and multiply. It becomes imperative to establish civil government.

So although it is initially peaceful, eventually, even for Locke, the state of nature becomes almost unbearable. Every one of them, in short, constantly dwelling on wants, avidity, oppression, desires, and pride, has transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the social man.

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 50 One way to avoid Hobbes's pessimistic conclusions about the state of nature is to start from different premisses.

In particular, life without the state might seem a much more attractive possibility if we adopted a different theory of human nature and motivation. Hobbes argues that people continually seek felicity: the power to satisfy whatever future desires they may have. This, together with fear and suspicion of fellow human beings, in a condition of scarcity, drives the argument for the state of war.

But suppose Hobbes was quite wrong. Suppose people naturally and spontaneously desire to help each other whenever they can. Perhaps, instead of competing in a struggle for existence, humans offer mutual aid, and act for the sake of each others' comfort. If so, then the state of nature will look very different. Although Rousseau does not make these optimistic assumptions about the natural goodness of human beings, his view takes a substantial step in this direction.

Like Hobbes and Locke he assumes that human beings are primarily motivated by the desire for self-preservation. Yet he also believes that this is not the end of the story. Hobbes and Locke overlooked a central aspect of human motivation—pity or compassion—and so overestimated the likelihood of conflict in the state of nature.

Rousseau believes that we have 'an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer' Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, This, he adds, is 'so natural, that the very brutes themselves sometimes give evident proofs of it'. Compassion, argues Rousseau, acts as a powerful restraint on the drives that might lead to attack and war.

THE STATE OF NATURE 25 It is this compassion that hurries us without reflection to the relief of those who are in distress: it is this which in a state of nature supplies the place of laws, morals, and virtues, with the advantage that none are tempted to disobey its gentle voice: it is this which will always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak child or a feeble old man of the sustenance they may have with pain and difficulty acquired, if he sees a possibility of providing for himself by other means.

Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 76 Rousseau does not doubt that if modern citizens, moulded and corrupted by society, were placed in a state of nature, they would act just as Hobbes depicted them. But both Hobbes and Locke have projected the qualities of man-in-society or even man-in-bourgeois-society on to savage man.

That is, they have depicted socialized traits as if they were natural. Rousseau follows this with a second claim. When we understand how 'savage man' behaves—motivated by both self-preservation and pity— the state of nature would be far from the Hobbesian state of war, and even in some respects preferable to a more civilized condition.

This does not mean that Rousseau is advocating a return to the state of nature, for that would be impossible for us, tainted and softened by society. Still, for Rousseau, it is something of a matter of regret that we have grown civilized. For Rousseau took an extreme, and extremely dismal, view of human progress. His treatise on education, Emile, begins: 'God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.

However, it is important to make clear that Rousseau's claim that human beings are naturally motivated by pity or compassion is very different from the point we attributed to Locke in the previous section: that human beings in the state of nature will often respect each other's rights.

Like Hobbes, Rousseau argues that notions of law, right, and morality have no place in the state of nature, and so, clearly, he cannot mean that we have a natural impulse to follow a moral law. But unlike Hobbes and Locke he claims that we generally try to avoid harming others, not because we recognize that harm is immoral, but because we have an aversion to harm, even when it is not our own.

We are naturally sympathetic to others, and are upset by their suffering. So we take steps to avoid this if we can.

But is this enough to prevent war in the absence of government? The trouble is that Rousseau has given natural man two drives—self-preservation and compassion—and it seems more than possible that the two could come into conflict. If another has what I believe to be essential for my preservation, but I can take it only by causing harm, what would I—or rather the savage—-do?

It would surely be rare for any creature to put a stranger's well-being before their own survival, and consequently if goods are scarce the influence of pity must fade. Rousseau more or less admits this. Pity stops the savage robbing the weak or sick, provided there is hope of gaining sustenance elsewhere. But what if there is little or small hope of this?

Perhaps, then, in a condition of scarcity we would suffer doubly. Not only would we be in a state of war, but we would feel terrible about all the harm we were doing to our fellow human beings. But the main point is that in a condition of scarcity, natural compassion does not seem enough to hold off the threat of war.

Rousseau tries to avoid this type of problem by supposing that savage man has few desires, and, relative to those desires, goods are more likely to be obtained by hunting and gathering than by taking them from others.

This is not because of nature's munificence, but because the savage, claims Rousseau, is a solitary being, rarely coming into contact with others. Indeed there would not even be families. Rousseau speculates that children would leave their mothers as soon as they could survive on their own, and that among savages there would be no permanent union of man and woman.

Compassion is not a strong enough sentiment to create a family bond. Part of Rousseau's explanation of the solitary life of the savage is that nature has equipped the savage to survive alone. Strong and fleet of foot, not only a match for wild beasts but generally free from disease which Rousseau claims to be a consequence of indulgence and unhealthy habits , the savage desires only food, sexual satisfaction, and sleep, and fears only hunger and pain.

Natural solitude rules out any desire for 'glory' or reputation, for the savage takes no interest in others' opinions. Indeed, as Rousseau argues that at this stage the savage has not yet developed language, the opportunities for forming and expressing opinions seem greatly restricted. Hobbes, we saw, defined power as 'the present means to satisfy future desires'.

But, Rousseau argues, the savage has little foresight, and barely even anticipates future desires, let alone seeking the means to satisfy them. Rousseau likens the savage to the contemporary Caribbean, who, he says, 'will improvi- dently sell you his cotton bed in the morning, and come crying in the evening to buy it again, not having foreseen he would want it again the next night' Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Consequently all of Hobbes's drives to war—desires for gain, safety and reputation—are either defused or absent in Rousseau's state of nature.

Still, despite its relatively peaceful character, Rousseau's state of nature hardly seems a welcoming prospect. Rousseau's savage may well be king of the beasts, but nevertheless, as portrayed, seems barely distinguishable from the other wild animals.

The savage, says Rousseau, is 'an animal weaker than some, and less agile than others; but, taking him all round, the most advantageously organised of any' Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Oxford University Press Amazon. Go to Google Play Now ». Political Thought. Oxford University Press , - Political Science - pages. Human beings live together in societies which, by their very nature, give rise to institutions governing the behavior and freedom of individuals.

This raises important questions about how these institutions ought to function, and the extent to which actual systems of government succeed or fail in meeting these ideals. This Oxford Reader contains key writings on political thought, covering issues about human nature and its relation to society, the extent to which the powers of the State are justified, the tension between liberty and rights, and the way resources should be distributed.