Property Rights in Locke and Term Paper

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At a minimum, a sovereign person owns themselves, pointing to the idea of individual civil rights that also arise from the state of nature and are independent of the state. Such a philosophy does not automatically translate into democracy. Indeed, Locke felt that legitimate contracts could exist between citizens, oligarchies, monarchies or tyrannies. However, Locke's idea of civil virtue had deep effects upon the American and French Revolutions. Locke's ideas of rights of the people and the role of central government provided strong support for intellectually for both revolutions and further for the development of the democracy in the western tradition. Indeed, Locke in section 76 of the Second Treatise specifically recognizes the growth of society from the family and that the fathers of families eventually became political monarchs. While this is the case, he makes the point that monarchs need to be "priests." Certainly, they were to reign, but not to directly rule so that they did not jeopardize the basic property rights that existed in nature (ibid, p. 25).

Like any issue of property, it results in contracts. While property has an existence that is independent of society, society spells out the rights of the individual to his property in this contract and the obligation of the state to protect property for the participants in the civil contract.

Certainly, John Locke's philosophy is a direct assault upon medieval ideas of the divine monarch and the absolute subservience of the individual to the state that the monarch symbolizes.

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While he does not oppose monarchy and oligarchy per se (the Roman Republic that was an influence upon him was hardly a democracy by our standards), such monarchy and oligarchy is limited. It does not own everything since before monarch or oligarchy existed, property and the families and the individuals that it nurtured existed before the state and has rights (as well as responsibilities) that existed before the state as constituted by virtue. For instance in medieval monarchical society, the serf's subservience to the monarch or lord was absolute. The divine right of kings recognized no individual rights (property or otherwise) outside of the prevue of the society. Instead, Locke sees in section 6 that we are ultimately God's property. Further in section 26, Locke observes that God gave the earth to men and the wisdom to use it properly (ibid., p. 11). In section 27, men as a whole own the earth and all of the inferior creatures below him (ibid). Therefore, the idea of serfdom is anathema to Locke.

Out of this philosophy grow our present ideas of private property rights and of our right to improve and to enjoy it as the fruits of our labors that flow from our property. While not democracy as we know it, Locke's Second Treatise was a major step forward in the limitation of government and in the recognition that we have rights that existed before and are independent to the existence of the state......

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