The idea of the necessity for a Social Contract is one which has been explored by countless philosophers, all of whom have varied ideas on why and how a social contract may come about. Within the Following essay i shall be exploring John Locke’s ideas on why humanity needs to enter a social contract and how this is gone about. John Locke was born in 1632, around the time of the English Civil war and the ascendency of Cromwell, which can be seen as great influences on the content of his works and his political beliefs.
One issue which is relevant to this subject is the amount of time Locke dedicated to refuting Filmer’s idea of divine right to sovereignty, believing instead that only God has absolute authority and this cannot be passed down through generations of Adam as man is selfish and if given the chance will only act in his own interest. Because of these ideas it is widely believed that Locke was very anti-monarchy and saw that no individual was ever above the law of the commonwealth and that society should be united people under the rule of power which protects and promotes justice.
Locke focuses on the idea of a Social Contract mostly within the text “the Second Treatise” published in 1689, which contains a detailed analysis of a hypothetical state of nature and how man progressed from this into living in a society under the State,a process which involves consent property and the social contract. To understand why Locke saw a Social Contract as a necessity to civil society, one must first explain how he saw the world in the absence of a social contract and how humanity behaved in this so called State of Nature.
Locks state of nature is similar to Hobbes’ in that they both saw all men as equal in their natural form, however Locke saw this equality in terms of equal freedom rather than equality in power or intelligence as Hobbes did. Locke saw that members of the State of Nature were free to live their lives in any way they so wished, free from the opinions and interjections of others, however Locke does also explicitly state that just because all men in the state of nature are free this does not give liberty to abuse each other as natural law is still present which encourages individuals to seek peace and stability, while also helping the needy.
The State of nature is pre-politics but it is not pre-morality, meaning that humanity still has the obligation to behave in a rational and kind manner. However, individuals do not give up their right to protect their property, but the punishment must be equal to the crime. Locke puts this equality of punishment down to humanity being God’s property, and no human has the right to remove or damage God’s property without an explicit justifiable reason. Locke saw the State of Nature to develop into something of a state of war once someone committed an act of premeditated murder.
Locke saw this as the law of self preservation going too far and individuals pushing nature to protect their own freedom. Because now at this stage humans realise that they can get ahead thorough war, this leads to the need for a common authority to protect each individual from the injustice which arises when there are no laws, according to Locke. This is where Locke brings in the Social Contract. Locke believed that humanity moves from the State of Nature into Civil Society through the Social Contract which is necessary to have a government to protect the freedom and justice of the people.
Having a supreme power reduces the necessity of war, because things such as property have a proper channel to be disputed through in a just and fair manner, which means that stability and security also increase. Locke explains there to be two crucial stages in the formation of a Social Contract. The first stage is individuals coming together in morality to create basic civil laws, such as laws on what determines ownership and what compensation is appropriate in the case of theft(Legal Dictionary,-).
The second stage is to form a government, freely elected, who enforce these Civil Laws and ensure that the society remains equal and the people as free as possible. he differences between Locke and Hobbes are striking here, where Hobbes saw the Social contract as the individual giving up their freedoms to be protected by a dystopian state, Locke is much more forgiving to human nature and see’s the state as only necessary for setting disputes which in no major way involves removing the freedom from the people.
Because Locke doesn’t see entering a social contract as giving up one’s freedom, this allows for him to be the polar opposite of Hobbes and allow his citizens the opportunity to challenge the state if they feel that the government is no longer acting in the interests of the people. This is important as it allows for full freedom in Locke’s state while also allowing there to be legastality structure. Locke saw that the people could rise up and overthrow a government and then rebuild the state with a new government, without having to return to either the state of nature or a state of war.
This is possible because of Locke’s previous segregation of the stages of the Social Contract, the people can choose to leave the second stage of the contract but the Civil moral laws still remain which prevents the state dissolving back into nature. This is important because it allows for a city state to change and develop over time and to remove and instate leaders who are appropriate for the time , which prevents the stagnation of a culture or nation. Another issue Locke saw as important was the subject of consent within society and specifically consenting to a government.
Locke saw that a government was only legitimate if and only if it was instituted with the full consent of each individual within the commonwealth. The issue here is the difficulty involved in gaining full consent from a society, an issue Locke answers by explaining two types of consent. The first; express consent, which is somewhat of an unabigiouse oath, meaning fully informed consent is freely given to the state to rule as it sees fit to protect the people. he second; tacit consent, which is a less direct form of consent where consent is assumed to be given because an individual uses benefits instated by the government, such as police protection or road safety laws.
Locke saw most citizens given the second form consent, which one finds very difficult in a modern context to see as consent at all as no content is actually put forwards at all. This is an issue that Locke seems to be aware of, saying “The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as tacit consent, and how far it binds, i. e. ow far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all. ” (Locke, 1689, sec 119)
This is obviously an issue because if locke himself is not able to express how an individual consents to the instatement of a government, then there seems to be an issue with his State as not every citizen has consented to their ruler. This issue has been picked up by many modern philosophers, including John Simmons who explains that, to Locke, consent comes across as necessary but not sufficient in grounding political obligation.
Simmons sees tacit consent as able to be as explicit as express consent, if it meets a set criterial. This criteria is; it must be clear to the individual that consent is appropriate , there must be a period during which consent can be withdrawn or complaints made, the end of this period must be explicit, the means of expressing dissent must be reasonable and easily performed, and the consequences of the individuals dissent mustn’t be detrimental to the potential consentor.
Locke presents his ideas of consent in a way that falls short of the final two criteria, and so because of this he was wrong to believe that tacit consent is enough to grant political obligation in most real life political situation. (Simmons, 1976, p279) What is interesting about Locke is that he himself was a liberal and so he believed in a less interventionist government and that humanity could well enough look after itself under God’s guidance.
Because of this he emphasises, in A Letter concerning Toleration, the purely external nature of the government, meaning that Locke’s government are only for protection of property and freedom of movement, things which Lock referred to as Bona Cicilia, Lock saw that the only way for this people to remain free as part of the city state was to allow the government only external power and to protect the internal self from the state. (Ryan, A. 2012, pp. 462-463). In conclusion, throughout my essay i have shown why Locke believes a social contract to be necessary to civil society, it acts as a mediator to give protection and offer justice.
Locke saw the Social Contract as necessary but limited, he believed that because it is twofold in construction this would allow the people to rise up against a tyrannical state and instate a new leader who acts in favour of the people. Locke also pays particular attention to consent in the formation of the Social Contract, something which has been a popular subject for political philosophers as his definitions of the role of consent is misleading and some, such as the discussed Simmons, believe that Locke did not infact mean consent in the way we would today.
Locke has been hugely influential with his work and has impacted the way in which societies are built since his publication of his ideas, with great nations such as america taking inspiration from Locke to form the Declaration of Independence in 1776, showing how important his more liberal views on the state have and will continue to be.