Rights Based Ethics
Since his thought has had such an influence on American political life, a study of the ethics of John Locke (and rights-based perspectives in general) is needed. And since the US is based on a system of individual rights, the justification for these rights is important to analyze. This approach falls into the Duties framework, because all rights based perspectives assume that we have a responsibility or duty to protect and promote individual rights. Put another way, the successful defense of a particular right creates a corresponding duty to be fulfilled.
Rights in the State of Nature
John Locke identifies rights by envisioning an ideal state of nature, a world of abundance where everyone had what they needed in order to live. Within this ideal state of nature, Locke identifies three rights: life, liberty, and property. The right to life is present in the ideal state of nature because the state of nature would not exist if human beings did not have lives. The right to liberty is present because people are born totally free in this state of nature, and no one has dominion over anyone else. Finally, the right to property is found in the ideal state of nature because human beings are entitled to possess the “fruits of their labor” (for example, when a person goes out to pick an apple, the apple is rightfully his). In the ideal state of nature these rights should never conflict, because they are not meant to serve irrational purposes.
Although the ideal state of nature assumes that everyone is rational, Locke recognizes that this isn’t the case in real life: “Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either” (Locke 477). Irrationality quickly enters the picture (such as when a person uses his labor to hoard all the apples on the tree, taking more than he needs and making it harder for others to survive), and this is what causes conflicts between rights. This is why human beings must enter into civil society: through a system of rational law we are brought closer to the state of nature, a state in which everyone can live in harmony.
For Locke, the only rational laws are those that fulfill the three basic rights, hence “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom” (Locke 476). Because people can easily be irrational, we must give up judgment to the rational government whenever we have a conflict between rights, and it is the role of the government to fairly arbitrate the conflict. However, if the government is not fulfilling its obligation to the people, then the people have the right to revolt and form a new social contract. Of course, this decision is not to be taken lightly, it should only be done when the government is not responsive to change and is not fulfilling humanity’s three natural rights.
Reasons for Fulfilling Duties
Locke gives two reasons that we ought to fulfill the duties to respect each other’s life, liberty and property. The first is that, when we enter into the social contract, we have a duty to uphold the contract, but only as long as the other side is fulfilling their side of the contract. As long as the contract actually fulfills man’s natural rights, then we have a duty to uphold that contract.
The second reason is because it brings us closer to the ideal state of nature we were originally meant to inhabit. Obviously, even life under a perfectly rational social contract is not the ideal state of nature in which human beings are born totally free, because government by its nature infringes on individual liberty. However, a rational government is the closest we can get to the state of nature. Since we ought (and naturally want) to try to return to that state, joining a rational government and respecting each other’s rights is the best we can do.
Locke, John. “Second Treatise on Government.” Classic of Political and Moral Philosophy. Ed. Steven M. Cahn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 461-505.