Seminar Paper - Locke: Treatises of Government & Science

Locke: Treatises of Government

The first doctrine that John Locke proposes is that of the 'Heritary Principle.' Locke has always been a noted critique of the monarchy and in this doctrine he outlines his reasons for this.

His main gripe is that the monarchy is inheritited so there is no system in place to make sure the 'right' person becomes the head of state, it's simply their first born child who becomes the heir to the throne. In Locke's view, the reasoning behind this is clear: if the wrong person becomes head of state the country could easily fall into disrepute. He also claims that Kings and Queens make laws that coincide with their own will, which, although impossible to avoid, isn't exactly what the public would want. Take the reign of Henry VII as an example; here we have a King who was once a conquerer, but as he aged he became brittle and greedy, increasing the taxes on the population just so he could count his wealth. Locke would argue that he should not have been able to become King in the first place as it was not in the interest of the people, yet his power on the battlefield earnt him the crown. He strongly feels that primogeniture (the state of being first born) is an injustice, especially if a younger child would make a better heir.

Robert Filmer's Patriarcha outlined a different opinion, to which Locke was very much opposed. Filmer stated that the power of the King is unlimited as he has divine power. Divine power is power granted by the gods, so what Falmer's publication suggests is that Kings derive from the gods and are thus unquestionable. Falmer also states that the Kings are the heirs to Adam from the Book of Genesis. He claims that this gives a Monarch a 'natural right' to rule over the people, which he backs up with a simple analogy about parenthood: You can compare the King's natural right to rule the nation to that of a father of his child. The children are never free of parental power and the father will always rule over him. If you replace the words 'father' with 'King' and 'child' with 'public' you can see the point that Filmer was making. Locke slams this interpretation, first off he says that parental power is only temporary, then he questions that the true heir of Adam is unknown, so would the Kings lay down their power to him if he were to reveal himself? Clearly, Locke thinks not.

The next doctrine in the Treatises of Government is that of 'The State of Nature, and Natural Law.' In this, Locke promotes his idea of the true origin of government.

The state of nature entails the law of nature which is not enforced by a human being. Where Hobbes' state of nature is very brutal, with every man fighting for himself; Locke's differs because it draws from the happier and peaceful side of the spectrum. Russell says that the ideas of a 'bad' state of nature come from evolution where only the strongest would survive, but does concede that Locke's comes from Biblical tales and myths of the golden age. He claims that moral laws are found in the bible.

"Men living together according to reason, without a common superior on Earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly a state of nature," states Locke, suggesting that with no government men were able to think for themselves and judge people not on what they are convicted of in the court of law, but how they see them. It also suggests that they can share what they like with each other, which offers Karl Marx a basis for the first stage of his cultural stage theory: primitive communism.

In a state of nature, Locke claims that a man can kill another if he was defending his possessions, be they family or inanimate. If a government was in place, the man would have to surrender this right of nature and let the courts deal with the matter, if he did not want to be prosecuted himself. What he's saying here is very true, but I feel that without the law man would find any reason to kill another, so the state of nature would very quickly develop into a state of war, and this is an objection to the state of nature theory. The only remaining example of the state of nature can be found in national governments, so it's fairly ironic, I suppose. This is because governments have to work together to draw out peace, else they'll end up in a state of war, which according to Locke, is the opposite of the state of nature as it is full of violence and mutual destruction, whereas nature is happy and composed of mutual assistance. The will to help others, not kill them. Locke believes that government law should stick as close to natural law as possible.

'The Social Contract' is the third doctrine. In this Locke says that a government is a result of a social contract between the public and those in power, with no influence of divine authority. Citizens must obey governments for a reason, even though it isn't in their interests for the most part. Some historians think of social contracts as facts, others feel that they are more the work of fiction.

Hobbes says that all power is handed over to the sovereign, giving them absolute control and total authority. Locke adds to this that governments must live up to their end of the bargain as well. This much is clear because if they do not, they are at risk of an uprising which could easily turn into a revolution. Looking at modern day Libya, this idea is applicable; the people felt that Gadaffi was no longer protecting them, but putting them in more danger, so they stood up and drove him away.

Locke's ideas all seem to point strikingly towards democracy, especially that of the majority vote. However, it must be taken into account that Locke was overlooking both woman and the lower classes, so his ideas aren't as democratic as they first appear.

"The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of property without his own consent." Now we are getting the impression that Locke's ideas can be applied to Capitalism, especially when he says that a general should injure an offending member of his platoon, not fine him. But this really is not the case, as certain aspects of his doctrine on property point out...

The first idea presented in this doctrine is that every man has property in produce of his own labour. If you grow, you own it, if you build it, you own it. This is part of the soul and body of Communism, the polar opposite to Capitalism. Locke goes on to suggest that a man should not own more than he can farm. This could be stopping unfair distribution of land so people have equal rights to what could be equal produce if they work hard enough to get it. Although the goal of Soviet Russia was to reach Communism, the land of equal rights and opportunity, Stalin's government overlooked this doctrine and insisted that every man grew produce for the state, in an attempt to keep the peasantry under control.

Idea number two was known as the 'Labour Theory of Value.' Simply put, this idea says that the labour involved to grow or make an object should be considered when valuing it. This theory is both ethical and economical. It would be ethically right for a man to be rewarded for his hard work with a good proffit, and the economical side says that it makes no sense to sell a product for less than the work and materials you put into making it.

The final stage of the Treatises of Government is 'Checks and Balances', which Locke uses to determine that the Executive (Monarch/Leading Parties), Legislate (Parliament) and Judicial Functions (the law) should be kept seperate where ever possible, so that no organisation can gain absolute power. In the eyes of Locke, a cause for war would be the executive failing to call the legislate in to discuss a matter. If there becomes a dispute between the two, war is considered the only option.

The main intention of this doctrine was to keep the three bodies seperate in order to limit the power of the English Monarch. Eventually, however, the Monarch became dependant on parliament as it is impossible to pass new laws and regulations without the majority vote. This a system that is still in use to this day, except the Queen now leaves everything to parliament, signing off the laws and regulations as they are passed. In a shot to the groin for Locke, the government is now both executive and legislative, and can only be controlled by general elections.

Science and the Clockwork Universe

Our journey with science begins with Copernicus, an astronomer who lived between 1473 and 1543. Copernicus was the first person since the Heliocentrics to say that the sun is at the centre of the universe. He had some rather outlandish claims, two of which were that the earth rotates around the sun once a year and that the earth spins on it's own axis once a day. How preposturous!

The Catholic Church certainly thought so; Copernicus dedicated his work 'De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium' to the Pope, but later the Church condemned the book claiming it was unholy. And low and behold, they had the backing of two philosophers. Luther was the first to derail the Heliocentric train when he said that there was proof in sacred texts that the theory was bonkers. He goes on to quote such a text and say that Joshua commanded the sun to stop, NOT the earth. There we go then. That's obviously conclusive proof. I asked for it to stop raining today, it didn't. Now I want Godly powers. Calvin also criticises the theory with God as his witness. He says that the world is stablished and cannot be moved and then questions who would believe the word of Copernicus over that of the Holy Spirit?

Russell points out that the important aspect of Copernicus' work is that it dethrones the earth from its geometrical pre-eminence. In other words, it throws it off-centre. Maybe this is what the religious bodies could not accept? Their whole works focus on the earth being the centre of everything, the be all and end all, yet now they've been shaken up by a new theory which basically suggests that the earth is not the most important object in the universe, and could even be used to suggest that without the sun we would not exist. Where's God hiding now?

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) holds a theory that is very much against Aristotle's view that the blanket above the moon (stars, planets, etc.) are immovable, that the sky looks the same from where ever you stand, be it on the moon or in Australia. Brahe supports this attack on Aristotle by noting the appearence of a new star in the sky, which is obviously beyond the moon. He also observed some very distant comets. Another of Brahe's important observations is that the sun and the moon rotate around the earth, but the other planets rotate around the sun. He was half-way there, I guess.

Our next important scientist is Kepler who roamed the earth between 1571 and 1630. Kepler was another Heliocentric who puts the sun at the centre of everything. He came up with the Three Laws of Planetary Motion, which I will try to explain here:

1. Planets eliptically orbit the sun, not circually. This was hard for people the church and believers in Plato to believe as an elipse is an imperfect shape and a circle is it's perfect incarnation. Surely the Gods wouldn't create this imperfect universe?
2. The lines joinging the planets to the sun sweep out equal distances in equal times. In the very mathematical way that Russell puts this: If S = Sun, and Planets at equal positions at certain times = P [to the power of]1 P2 P3 etc, then P1SP2, P2SP3 and so on prove that planets closer to the sun rotate around it quicker than those furthest away as they have less distance to travel.
3. The square of the period of time the planet takes to complete one revolution is proportional to the cube of it's average distance from the sun. This compares measurements of different planets. If R = Average distance from the sun, and T = length of planet's year, then Rcubed divided by Tsquared is the same for all the planets. This helped to prove Newton's law of the inverse square for gravitation.

Galileo is and was a pioneer. He's most well known due to the development of his telescope - but more on that later. Right now we're concerned with his discovery of acceleration, a change in the velocity of an object. He developed the law of falling bodies which states that no matter what weight they are, they will fall at a rate of 32 feet per second in a vacuum. This is constant, so they gather 32 feet per second in velocity for every second they are falling. A body falling for 2 seconds, for example, will reach 64 feet per second, compared to a body falling for 5 seconds which hits 160 feet per second.

He is also noted for his work on projectiles. Up until Galileo, the general theory was that a projectile would carry on horizontally for a while, before vertical velocity took over and it dropped suddenly, almost at a right angle. Galileo showed that when vertical velocity takes over, the projectile still has the propulsion from the horizontal velocity, so the object would fall diagonally, covering both vertical and horizontal ground. Galileo's rule of inertia says that an object dropped from the top a tower hits the ground directly underneath it because it is carrying the velocity from the earth's rotation. This is why you don't land in your back garden when you jump 10 miles down the road. You keep the velocity of the rotation.

Now onto the telescope. Galileo already had heliocentric beliefs, so was obviously very keen to observe the sky. He knew that a telescope was being developed in Holland, so he made his own. Through it he could see the phases of venus, he could see that the Milky Way was made of a number of stars, and that Jupiter had four satellites. This is where religion, again, denounces science. They argue that seven is a holy number and that there are 7 holy bodies. Four more orbiting Jupiter will make that number 11, one with no holy significance, so how could Galileo be right? They accused the telescope of causing illusions and refused to look through it. Why? Because science was stomping all over their ancient beliefs and they did not want to lose the pillars of their ethos. Galileo was eventually condemned by the Italian inquisition, halting scientific progress in Italy for centuries.

Isaac Newton is known for discovering gravity, but he also proved Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. He also defined 'force' as a change of motion. If I jump, my force is taken me off the ground, however, when I fall, the force of gravity takes control, and thus I land. With his law of universal gravitation, Newton deduces everything in planetary theory from the planets, satellites, comets and the tides. The law itself states: "Every body attracts every other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." With this, Newton made the universe knowable to the masses, he made it clockwork.

There are other notable scientific discoveries in the 17th Century including: magnets, blood circulation, bacteria and the microscope.

Francis Bacon hated the Aristolean and Scholastic approach, he claimed it was both barren and circular, as it was undeveloped for many years and it kept on repeating itself. It didn't go anywhere. Critics of Bacon say that his biggest mistake is mixing religion and science as they have conflicting interests.

Bacon wasn't just a philosopher and scientist; at the age of 23 he joined parliament, then in 1618 he was made Lord Chancellor, but he lost this position after two years for accepting bribes. For this, he was sentenced to spend time in the Tower of London and to pay a £40,000 fine. Although he only spent four days in the tower and didn't pay the fine, he chose to spend the rest of his life writing books, avoiding the public eye.

He introduced the idea of induction: gaining knowledge, then testing it over and over to prove that it's right. This scientific method is still in use today. An example of how Bacon used it can be seen when he wanted to discover the nature of heat; he made a list of bodies that were hot, cold and those that had varying temperatures. He then tested them to see what aspects were heat specific - those that were present in hot bodies but absent in cold were clearly linked specifically to heat. He then tested this over and over in different circumstances to prove that he was right.