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... dancer. The goal of the dancer is to be able to express freedom and spontaneity. Paradoxically perhaps (at least for the Hobbesian who understands only negative freedom), the dancer's freedom of expression requires years of disciplined practice and study. Again, the dancer becomes ever more free to express his or her ideas, feelings, etc. - the more he or she undertakes the rules of long practice, proper diet, etc.
As another example: as drivers of automobiles, we all share the same goal: we want to be able to achieve our individual goals - getting to school or work, getting to the movie or the grocery store, etc. - safely and without damage to our vehicles. Traffic rules - which determine, for example, which side of the road drive on, when and where to stop and go, etc. - are ways (means) of ordering or regulating our behavior, so that we can achieve our shared goal of driving more safely - which then allows us to pursue our individual goals more freely. In a democratic society, such rules ideally result from collective discussion and agreement: in this way, they are self-imposed means of achieving shared ends - just as the dancer's diet and practice are self-imposed means for achieving the goal of excellence. For the Hobbesian who believes solely in negative freedom, I can be free only if I am free from traffic rules of any sort: and imagine the results of everyone driving like Hobbesian's! But for Locke and others who uphold a positive conception of freedom - I am more free to achieve my individual goals, not by opposing the rules, but through obeying the rules (presuming that the rules that are self-imposed as the result of reaching agreement in a democratic society).
It is this sense of positive freedom - meaning, the capacity of reason for self-rule as it seeks to achieves its ends - that Locke seeks to establish in Paragraphs 56 and 57 of our reading. He begins with an appeal to a conception of Adam as the first man - the archetype for human nature: Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the first instant of his being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason which God had implanted in him. That is, human nature, on this view, is centrally defined as the capacity to govern one's own actions by way of reason and the laws of reason - both of which, it appears, come from God. Continuing in Paragraph 57, Locke makes the claim (for the Hobbesian believer in negative freedom, the utterly puzzling claim) that, indeed, it is only through following reason and the law of reason that we can be free: The law that was to govern Adam, was the same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant, and without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law: for no body can be under a law which is not promulgated to him, and this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the use of his reason cannot, be said to be under this law; and Adam's children being not presently as soon as born, under this law of reason were not presently free. To support this claim, Locke then explains more carefully the relationship between law and his conception of (positive) freedom.
He does so by first arguing against Hobbes' view of law (i. e. , as an obstacle or hindrance to the negative freedom coveted by the desire-driven, self-interested individual): For law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation [i. e. , as Hobbes would have it] as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law. To support this claim, in turn, Locke explains: Could they be happier without it, the law, as a useless thing would of itself vanish, and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken [i. e. , by Hobbes and his followers], the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: For in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
But this claim - that law, as what preserves and enlarges freedom, is necessary for there to be freedom - can make sense only if freedom is defined in a specific way. So Locke continues (again, arguing specifically against Hobbes' view): For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be where there is no law: But freedom is not, as we are told [by Hobbes], A liberty for every man to do what he lists: (For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him? ) That is, the 'freedom' Hobbes assumes - the freedom to pursue one's own desires, free from constraints of any sort - leads, as Hobbes himself argued to 'violence, ' to the war of each against all. But in such a condition - where everyone else is our potential master if s / he can become so through force - Locke argues, no one is 'free. ' Rather, freedom must be understood in a sense that goes beyond the Hobbesian emphasis on negative freedom: liberty or freedom for Locke is not the freedom to do whatever one wants, But a liberty to dispose, and order, freely as he lists, his person, actions, possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own. After wrestling with the difficulties of resolving human freedom through the possession of reason with the realities of parental control over those human beings who are not yet fully rational (i. e. , children), Locke then summarizes his position in Paragraph 63: The freedom then of man and liberty of acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free; but to thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as wretched, as as much beneath that of a man, as theirs.
In sum, our central human identity as rational creatures means that we are capable of self-rule through a positive conception of freedom. We can now see that Locke's conception of human nature, as a rationality capable of self-rule and positive freedom, then provides support for democratic revolution as follows: 1) While the Hobbesian view, stressing negative freedom for the desire-driven, self-interested individual, leads rather naturally to the authoritarian state - Locke can argue that human beings capable of self-rule need no such authoritarian regimes. On the contrary... 2) [P 1 ] if human nature is understood as a essentially a rationality capable of positive freedom, the capacity for self-rule; [C 1 ] then the only legitimate governments are those governments which preserve and enhance our humanity - i. e. , our rationality / positive freedom / capacity for self-rule... meaning, in turn, that [P 2 ] if consent preserves and follows from our humanity / rationality /positive freedom / capacity for self-rule), then [C 2 ] governments and their laws are legitimate only if they rest on consent of the governed (i. e. , as they preserve our essential humanity as rationalities capable of self-rule).
Notice that this last conclusion, C 2, is just the initial premise we need for the revolutionary / democratic argument characteristic of the American experience. More generally, we can now see that argument as follows: [P 1 ] If democratic society (in contrast with authoritarian society) is one in which our (positive) freedom (to determine our own ends and our own rules as means to those ends) is preserved and enlarged through law (i. e. , the rules serving as means to our individual and social ends), then [C 2 ] authoritarian society (e. g. , the monarchy of King George III) is illegitimate (because it denies our essential humanity, and [C 3 ] democratic society is justified (because it preserves and enhances our humanity - our essential capacity of self-rule, of determining our own goals and rules for achieving those goals). Locke in fact makes the requirement for consent explicit in Paragraph 64. Jefferson will follow him on this point, of course, in The Declaration of Independence, where he asserts as 'self-evident' Locke's view that human beings are essentially freedoms (in Jefferson's language, they have the inalienable right to Liberty).
This assertion is then followed by Jefferson's version of the above argument. For Jefferson it is further self-evident That to secure these rights [including the right to liberty], Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [emphasis added-CE) Let the revolution begin! Comments? Send e-mail to
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Research essay sample on Democratic Society Human Beings
