John Locke's philosophy posits that individuals possess inherent, natural rights to life, liberty, and property that predate government. While these rights are unalienable, their specific definition and protection within society ultimately fall to the government, creating a complex relationship with libertarian ideals.
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lock on the face of
it LO is a powerful Ally of the libertarian
libertarian
first he
believes as Libertarians today
maintain that there are certain
fundamental individual
rights that are so important that no
government even a representative
government even a democratically elected
them not only that he believes that
those fundamental Rights
property and furthermore he argues that
property is not just the creation of
government or of law the right to
property is a natural right in the sense
that it is pre-political
it is a right that attaches to
individuals as human beings even before
government comes on the scene even
before parliaments and legislator enact
laws to Define rights and to enforce
them Lo says in order to think about
what it means to have a natural right we
have to to imagine the way things
are before
government before
law and that's what l means by the state of
of
nature he says the state of nature is a
liberty human beings are free and equal
beings there is no natural
hierarchy it's not the case that some
people are born to be Kings and others
are born to be
surfs we are free and equal in the state of
of
nature and
yet he makes the point that there's a
difference between a state of liberty
license and the reason is that even in
the state of nature there is a kind of
law it's not the kind of law that
legislators enact it's a law of
nature and this law of
nature constrains what we can do even
though we're free even though we're in
the state of
constraints the only
constraint given by the law of
nature is
that the rights we have the natural
rights we have we can't give
up nor can we take them from somebody
else under the law of nature I'm not
free to take somebody else's life or
Liberty or
property nor am I free to take my
own life or Liberty or
property even though I'm free I'm not
free to violate the LA law of nature I'm
not free to take my own life or to sell
myself into
slavery or to give to somebody else
arbitrary absolute power over me so
where does this constraint you may think
it's a fairly minimal constraint but
where does it come
from well lock tells us where it comes
from and he gives two
being all the
workmanship of one omnipotent and
infinitely wise maker namely
God they are his property whose
workmanship they are made to last during
his not one another's
pleasure so one answer to the question
is why can't I give up my natural rights
to life liberty and property is well
after all you are the creature of
God God has a bigger property right in
us a prior property
right now you might say that's an
unsatisfying unconvincing answer at
least for those who don't believe in God
what did L have to say to
them well here's where Lo appeals to the
idea of reason
and this is the
idea that if we properly reflect on what
it means to be
free we will be led to the conclusion
that freedom can't just be a matter of
doing whatever we
want I think this is what lock means
when he says the state of nature has a
law of nature to govern it which obliges
everyone and reason which is that
law teaches mankind who will but
consulted that all being equal and and
independent no one ought to harm another
in his life Health Liberty or
possessions this
leads to a puzzling
paradoxical feature of locks account of
Rights familiar in one sense but strange in
in
another it's the idea that our natural
rights are unalienable what does
unalienable mean it's not for us to
alienate them or to give them up to give
them away to trade them away to sell
them consider an airline ticket airline
tickets are non-transferable or tickets
to the Patriots or to the Red Sox
Sox
non-transferable tickets are
unalienable I own them in the limited
sense that I can use them for myself but
I can't trade them away so in one sense
an unalienable right and
non-transferable right makes something I
own less fully
mine but in another sense of unalienable
rights especially where we're thinking
property for a right to be unalienable
makes it more deeply more profoundly
mine and that's Lock's sense of UN
aable we see it in the American
Declaration of Independence Thomas
Jefferson Drew on this idea of lock
unalienable rights to life liberty and
as Jefferson amended lock to the pursuit
of happiness unalienable
rights rights that are
so essentially
mine that even I can't trade them away
or give them up
up
so these are the rights we have in the
state of nature before there is any
government in the case of life and
Liberty I can't take my own life I can't
sell myself into slavery any more than I
can take somebody else's life or take
force but how does that work in the case
of property because it's essential to Lock's
Lock's
case that private
property can arise
even before there is any
government How can there be a right to private
private
property even before there is any
government Lock's famous answer comes in section
section
27 Every Man Has a property in his own
person this nobody has any right to but
himself the labor of his body and the
work of his hands we may say are properly
properly
his so he
moves as the Libertarians later would
move from the idea that we own
ourselves that we have property in our
persons to the closely connected idea
that we own our own
labor and from that to the further claim
that whatever we mix our labor with that is
is
unowned becomes our
property whatever he removes out of the
state that nature has provided and left
it in he has mixed his labor with and
joined it to something that is his own
and thereby makes it his property
property
why because the labor is the
unquestionable property of the labor and
therefore no one but the laborer can
have a right to what is join joed to or
mixed with his labor and then he adds
this important provision at least where
there is enough and as good left in
common for
others but we not
only acquire a property in the fruits of
the Earth in the deer that we hunt in
the fish that we
catch but
also if we till and plow and enclose the
land and grow
potatoes we own not only the potatoes
but the land the
Earth as much land as a man tills plants
improves cultivates and can
use the product of so much is his
property he by his labor encloses it
from The Commons
Commons
so the idea that rights are unalienable
seems to distance lock from the
libertarian the libertarian wants to say
we have an absolute property right in
ourselves and therefore we can do with
ourselves whatever we want luck is not a
sturdy Ally for that view in fact he
says if you take natural rights
seriously you'll be led to the idea that
there are certain constraints on what we
can do with our natural rights
constraints given either by God or by
reason reflecting on what it means
really to be free and really to be
free means recognizing that our rights
are unalienable so here's the difference
between lock and the Libertarians but
when it comes to Lock's account of private
private
property he begins to look again like a
pretty good
Ally because his argument for private
property begins with the idea that we
are the Proprietors of our own person
and therefore of our labor and therefore
of the fruits of our labor including not
only the
things we
gather and hunt in the state of
nature but also we acquire property
right in the land that we enclose and
cultivate and
improve there are some examples that can
bring out the the moral
intuition that our labor can take
something that is unowned and make it
ours though sometimes there are disputes about
this there's a
debate among rich countries and
developing countries about trade related
intellectual property rights it came to
a head recently over drug patent
laws Western countries and especially
the United States say we have a big
pharmaceutical industry that develops
new drug
drugs we want all countries in the world
to agree to respect the
patents Then There came along the AIDS
crisis in South
Africa and the
American AIDS
drugs were hugely
expensive far more than could be
afforded by most Africans so the South
African government said we're going to
begin to buy a generic version of the
AIDS anti-retroviral
drug at a tiny fraction of the cost
because we can find an Indian
manufacturing company that figures out
how the thing is
made and produces it and for a tiny
fraction of the cost we can save lives
if we don't respect that patent and then
the American government said no here's a
company that invested research
and created this drug you can't just start
start
mass-producing these drugs without
paying a licensing fee so there was a
dispute and the the US the
pharmaceutical companies sued the South
African government to try to prevent
their buying the cheap generic as they
saw it pirated version of an AIDS
drug and eventually
the pharmaceutical industry gave in and
said all right you can do that but this
dispute about what the rules of property
should be of intellectual property of drug
drug
patenting in a way is the Last Frontier
of the state of nature because among
nations where there is no uniform
law of patent rights and property rights
it's up for grabs until by some Act of
consent some International
agreement people enter
rules what about Lock's account of
private property and how it can arise
before government and before law comes
successful how many think it's pretty
persuasive raise your hand
hand
how many don't find it
persuasive all right let's hear for some
critics what is wrong with Lock's
account of how private property can
arise without consent
consent
yes yeah um I think it justifies
European cultural norms as far as when
you look at how Native Americans may not
have cultivated American land but by their
their
arrival in the Americas that would con
that contributed to the development of
America which wouldn't have otherwise
necessarily happened then or by that
specific group so you think that this is
a defense this defense of private
property in land yes because it
complicates original acquisition if you
only cite the arrival of foreigners that
cultivated the land I see and what's
your name relle relle yeah relle says
this account of how property
arises would fit what was going on in North
North
America during the time of the the
settlement the European
settlement do you think uh Rochelle that it's
it's
a it's a way of defending the
appropriation of the land indeed because
I mean he's also uh you know justifying
the Glorious Revolution so I don't think
it's inconceivable that he's also
justifying colonization as well
well that's an
interesting historical suggestion and I
think there's a lot to be said for it uh
what do you think of the validity of his
argument though because if you're right
that this would justify The Taking of
land in North
America from Native Americans who didn't enclose
enclose
it if it's a good argument then Lock's
given us a justification for that if
it's a bad argument then Lock's given us
a mere rationalization that isn't morally
morally
defensible I I I'm leaning to the second
one you're leaning to the second that's
my opinion as
well all right well then let's let's
hear let's hear if there's a defender of
of locks account of private property and
it would be interesting if they could address
address
Rochelle's worry that this is just a way
of defending the appropriation of land
by the American American
colonists from the Native Americans who
didn't enclose it is there someone who
will defend
point you ready are you going to defend
lock like you're you're accusing him of
justifying the European basically
Massacre of the Native Americans but who
says he's defending it maybe the
European colonization isn't right uh you
know maybe it's the state of war that he
talked about in his Second Treatise you know
know
so the wars between the Native
Americans and the colonists the
settlers that might have been the state of
of
war that we can only emerge from by an
agreement or an act of consent and
that's what would have been
required yeah and both sides would have
had to agree to it and carry it out and
everything but what about when what's
your name Dan but Dan what about
Rochelle says this argument in section
27 and then in
32 about appropriating
land that argument if it's valid would
justify the settlers appropriating that
land and excluding others from it do you
think that argument is a good argument
well doesn't it kind of imply that the
that well the Native Americans say
hunter gather is didn't actually
enclose enclos land so I think Rochelle
is on to something there but I want to
I'd like go ahead Dan at the same time
he's saying that just by picking an
acorn or taking an apple or maybe
killing a buffalo on a certain amount of
land that makes it yours because it's
your labor and that's you know your
labor would enclose that land so by that
definition maybe they didn't have fences
around little plots of land but didn't
they were using it defin Maybe by lock
definition the Native Americans could
have claimed a property right in the
land itself but they just didn't have
lock on their side as she points out
okay that's good uh one more defender of
lock go
ahead well I mean just to defend lock he
does say that there are some um times in
which you can't take another person's
land for example you can't acquire a
land that is common property to people
and in terms of American Indians I feel
like they already have civilizations
themselves and they were using land in
common so it's kind of like what an
analogy to what he was talking about
with like the common English property
you can't take land that everybody's
Shing Comm and also you can't um you
can't take land unless you make sure
that there's um as much land as possible
left for other people to take as well so
if you're taking common so you have to
make sure that whenever you take land or
that there's enough left for other
people to use that's just as good as the
land that you took so that's it's that's
true lock says there has to be this
right to private property in the earth
is subject to the provision that there
be as much and as good left for others
what's your name right I'm Fang so Fang
in a way agrees with Dan that maybe
there is a claim within locks framework
that could be developed on behalf of the Native
Americans here's the further
question if the right to private
property is natural not
conventional if it's
something that we acquire even before we
agree to
government how does that right constrain
do in order finally to see whether is
whether Lo is an ally or
potentially a Critic of the Liber
libertarian idea of the state we have to
ask What Becomes of our natural rights
once we enter into
society we know that the way we enter
into society is by consent by
agreement to leave the state of nature
and to be governed by the
majority and by a system of laws human
laws but those human
laws are only
legitimate if they respect our natural
rights if they respect our unalienable
rights to life liberty and
property no
Parliament no legislature however
Democratic its
credentials can legitimately
legitimately
violate our natural
rights this
idea that no law can violate our right
to life liberty and property would
seem to support the idea of a government so
so
limited that it would Gladden the heart
of the libertarian after all
all
but those hearts should not be so
quickly gladdened because even though
for lock the law of nature
persists one's government arrives even
though Lo insists on limited government
government limited by the end for which
it was created namely the preservation
of property even so there's an important
sense in which what counts as my
property what
counts as respecting my life and
Liberty are for the
Define
that there be property that there be
Liberty is what limits
counts as respecting my
life and respecting my
property that is for governments to
decide and to
Define how can that be is lck contradicting
contradicting
himself or is there an important distinction
distinction
here in order to answer that question
which will decide locks fit with the
libertarian view we need to look closely
at what legitimate government looks like
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