FREE ESSAY ON LOCKES ARGUMENT FOR THE ORIGIN AND PRACTICE OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY

LOCKES ARGUMENT FOR THE ORIGIN AND PRACTICE OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY

Locke's Argument for the Origin and Practice of Legitimate Authority
Through out time there has been a constant struggle between the ideas of social control
and the rights of the individual. Even at the present time there are conflicting opinions
on how much power the government should have and how much power the individual should
have over themselves. John Locke, like many before him, had an idea of how government and
society should run. He attempts to devise an argument that will define the limits of
political power while establishing the rights of resistance. Locke has many points that
come together to create his argument. These are primarily based on the basic principles
that natural equality when combined with legitimate authority will lead people and their
property, out of a state of nature and into a better, stronger, and more stable society.
Locke's main point on property is that all human bodies are property of that person. He
illustrates this view when he states, " Through the earth, and all inferior creatures, be
common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any
right to but himself"(p. 19). It is clear that Locke's idea of property does embrace the
notion that the self is the property of the person and only that individual 
person. Locke furthers his argument by explaining how a human can have actual 
material property. In order to obtain material property one must mix whatever one wishes
to own with the labour of their body. He defines labour as something that makes common
private. He puts certain limits to actual material property by saying that someone can
only own as much as they can use to any advantage without spoil and they must leave
enough and as good for others. 
Locke also touches on the institution of slavery. Slavery in the voluntary or
non-voluntary sense is prohibited under Locke's argument. His reasons for why this act is
prohibited are that when someone has ownership of another person they have the power to
do with that person's life what they please. This is a direct violation because he has
already set the premise that each person is the owner of himself, and if someone else
were to own another it would violate this premise. The idea of slavery is also prohibited
because it goes against the law of nature that lists self-preservation as being its
number one priority. The law of nature thus ties into the property premise and leads to
an ultimate conclusion that slavery should not exist. 
Locke states, " Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his
station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in
competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, 
unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends
to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another"(p.9).
This basically sums up Locke's law of nature. He feels that the first duty of man is to
preserve himself above all other things, and next he should also preserve, as much as
possible, his fellow man. Locke believes that in a state of nature every individual has
the authority to execute the law of nature, but only when the killing of the offender
will do justice. Justice of this type is defined as punishing the crime for the
prevention of similar crime, which is stated to be the right of all persons, and
reparation which is solely the right of the injured. Overall Locke does support the
killing of murderers if necessary for justice. The support roots from the idea of
guaranteed protection the simple fact they will not be alive to harm again. His feelings
on this issue are illustrated clearly when he says, "every man, in the state of nature,
has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing the like injury, which no
reparation can compensate, by the example of punishment that attends it from every body,
and also to secure men from the attempts of a criminal"(p. 11). 
Locke doesn't believe the state of nature is comparable to total destruction of 
humanity or a hell, but he does see many problems with it. The main reason people choice
to go from the state of nature and into a society is for better protection of their
property. He states that the two main problems with any type of property protection are 
that there are no common authorities and human partiality gets in the way when speaking 
of fair punishment. In a more detailed account he states the direct problems with the
state of nature are that there are no standings laws, indifferent judges, or reliable
executive powers. All these problems encompass one main issue. This issue is that
property, physical and material, needs to be protected in a more secure way. The way to
obtain this higher security is to move out of the state of nature and into a society.
Locke first moves out of the state of nature and into society through the introduction of
consent. Consent is the necessary condition that makes obedience legitimate. To explain
what he means by consent he first explains how humans can give consent and why they can
give consent. He states that the idea of consent of all is the origin of society. He
states, "For when any number of men have, by the consent of every individual, made a
community, they have thereby made that community one body, with a power to act as one
body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority"(p. 52). This clearly
shows how crucial consent is to the membership of society, and not only consent, but the
consent of each and every member in that society. Their joint consent then makes for a
majority type of rule. He believes to be part of a society and to be obligated to follow
the rules of that society an individual must first consent to being a part of that
society. There are two different forms of consent. The first one is express consent while
the second is tacit consent. Express consent is explicit consent while tacit 
is a silent consent. Locke believes that explicit consent is obvious and not hard to 
understand, while tacit is more difficult to establish. Locke does however believe that
if one, " that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any
government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience
to the laws to that government"(p. 53). This basically means if you live in a society
where a government is established and you have property or are enjoying the society you
are staying in this is enough for tacit consent. Once a person has consented, either with
explicit or tacit, they are a part of society. Society is made to preserve the lives,
liberty and estates, which all make up property.
When entering into society people give up the power to do what they want for preservation
and the power to punish others that they had in the state of nature. Since people did
however have the right to property in the state of nature, and would never consent to be
worse off than they were before, society must always protect property. Along with the
protection of property to make government legitimate there are certain conditions to be
met. There must be promotion of the common good, secure property, establishment of a
standing law, indifferent judges, and an impartial execution of the law. 
The legislation has limits as well as duties. The limits are that there can't be an
absolute arbitrary rule, property can't be taken without consent, and there will be no
unauthorized transfer of power. There can never be an absolute monarchy and rule will 
thus then be limited. Locke believes that monarchy is a type of slavery and violates the

law of nature that then makes it totally illegitimate. 
Locke believes that government's main purpose is to protect property with unbiased laws,
while also pursuing the overall common good of the society. He makes this view clear with
his opening words for chapter eleven that state, " The great end of men's entering into
society, being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great
instrument and means of that being the laws established in society"(p. 69). Considering
that consent is the origin of legitimate obedience, when the government is doing things
that the people would not have consented to, the people will be no longer obliged to
obey. When he states, "The reason for society is the preservation of property. Whenever
those in power endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, they put
themselves in a state of war with the people. They forfeit authority, which devolves to
the people, who have the right to resume their original liberty and establish a new
legislative"(p. 211), Locke states clearly exactly when the people have a right to rebel.
He more specifically lists certain misuses of power that will enable persons to rebel
over there government. They include the placing of arbitrary will in place of the laws,
hindering legislative from assembling, altering power structure or legal process without
consent of the people, delivering people into subjection of foreign power, failing to
execute laws, and in general robbing a person from their property without consent. When 
this breach of power occurs, the society has a right to make new legislative. He further
states that people not only have the right to stop misusage of power but also to stop the
misusage before it happens. 
Locke states that an objection claiming these premises will bring a pond a format for to
much rebellion will occur. Locke believes that people can rebel when authority forfeits
its power by disregarding what was previously consented to. Locke first responds to this
objection and also lays out a type of guideline for when people should rebel by saying
that when people are exposed enough to the misusage of governmental power they will be
always be ready to resist. He then goes on to state that people don't rebel because of
one or two minor inconveniences. They rebel when there are many wrongs and many unjust
laws. He believes that rebellion occurs when the list of offences is great and mimics a
life worse than the state of nature. His third rebuttal of the objection involves the
idea that the people who will rebel aren't actually the rebels. He believes that those
who try to unjustly obtain property are the real rebels. It follows that in reality the
prevention of this unjust obtaining of property is really the best way to ward of
rebellion in the first place. The people who attempt to obtain property unjustly are
rebels because they are rebelling against what consent the people had given them to
govern their society. By breaking this agreement to act in ways which only previously
consented to, the authorities are actually the ones rebelling against the people, not the
people rebelling 
against the government. Locke concludes by comparing the idea of people who rebel against
the wrongs of their government to the idea that "men may not oppose robbers or pirates
because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed"(p. 115). By this statement he means that
if someone is taking from you something you have a right to, which in this case is the
right to a government based on consent, to not rebel based on the idea that some ciaos
may occur is ridiculous. 
Locke's main premises are that to be legitimate government must have the consent of all
people in a society and preserve those individual properties. He concludes from these
premises that if the government does not do anything that violates the original consent
or attempt to deny a member of society property of any sort without consent then
obedience will be legitimate. In return, if the government does violate the consent of
the people or deny them of any property without consent then the people have the right to
rebel and resume their original liberty and establish a new legislative law. The
conclusions do indeed follow from the premises. If the individual must consent to get
into society once in it does follow that as long as what they consented to has not been
abused or changed obedience will be legitimate. Following, if an individual consents to a
society then an arbitrary power takes it a pond themselves to change the ideas originally
consented to, the society would in return have no obligation to obey a law they never
agreed to in establishment. 
Locke's argument is sound. The conclusions made by Locke do follow from the premises, and
the premises are true. Locke's premise that to be legitimate government must have the
consent of all people in a society is correct. A person has consented to obedience and
government when they agree to live in a society, or enjoy that society. From this anyone
deciding to live in that area where a society has been established has then consented to
being part of the society, either with express or tacit consent. Thus, it is true that a
legitimate government will have the consent of all the people, for if they are living
where that government operates, they will have in some way consented. It is also true
that preservation of property is needed for legitimate government. In Locke's state of
nature a person has property, and since no one would consent to society if it were worse
than the state of nature, it follows that it must be true that property must be protected
for society to be legitimate. 
Since Locke's argument proves validity and true premises it can be concluded that his
argument for the legitimacy of obedience is not only valid but also sound.