Plato's Republic

Key themes

• Tripartite soul
• Elitism
• Abolition of family and property in the elite
• Connection between metaphysical theory (forms) and politics

Context

Politics in Plato's time was based around the city-state. Each was relatively small, and developed its own nomoi. (cultural laws), upon which political and legal superstructures were based.

Athens, Plato's city, was unusually large and cosmopolitan, and was defended by a navy rather than a land army. These factors lent themselves to the development of democracy, in which around 5% of the population participated (no women, no slaves). Other city states tended to be more militaristic, with despots or oligarchs ruling (e.g. Sparta).

Plato's point of departure was a hatred of Athenian democracy, which he described as the "tyranny of the majority". He saw how orators could manipulate people's emotions (spirit and appetite) to the exclusion of their reason, and thought that Athens lacked a proper education and any proper rule.

The Platonic State

Plato actually describes two ideal states. The first, which he deals with only very briefly, is largely an economic system, in which his chief concern is the efficient management of people's appetitive needs. In this state, each person would specialise according to their needs and abilities. Though Plato initially describes this model as "the healthy city" (369b-372e), he later dismisses it, pointing out that there could be no harmony without any rule of reason from without.

Plato's second state, the just state, is a balance between kinds of people in the same way as the just person is a balance in the tripartate soul (see Thrasymachus, Morality and Interest). Those whose souls are dominated by reason are philosophers (or guardians); those whose souls are dominated by spirit are soldiers; those whose souls are dominated by appetite are commoners. A just state is one in which each of these are in balance.

As with the soul, the state must be governed by reason (the guardians). It will also create an education system and social space for philosophy, something not very common or popular in democracies (perhaps Plato was merely setting up a state ideal for his own constitution?), and suitable training for soldiers, tradesmen and workers.

The guardian class must have absolute control; too much liberty in spiritual / appetitive people is bad because it allows them to corrupt themselves without the ministrations of reason.

Objection: This can only be said if philosophers are able to access practical knowledge required to manage a state. The state may also end up serving the interests of the guardian class, having the preservation and promotion of the education system and social space as its primary goal, rather than the wellbeing of the population as a whole.

Since private interests (i.e. family and property) may yet corrupt rulers, Plato suggested that rulers must abolish property and the family within their own class, so that rulers only serve reason. Again, this still opens the door to certain avarice, but it at least guarantees that rulers will judge other cases relating to property more justly. Plato hoped that this would generalise family feelings across the elite class, thus ensuring that a moral education, usually the job of the family, becomes the role of the education system.

One can further object that even if the guardians can't rule in their own appetitive interests, they have no motivation to rule in the interests of the soldier and worker classes, so long as the soldiers will continue to defend them, and the workers continue to produce socially necessary goods.

The psychology upon which his state is based is also less than certain. Even if we accept his conception of a tripartite soul, and that different people find different balances, Plato gives us no reason why we should think that people can be categorised so sharply, in particular because the Guardian class, for example, would need to have almost no appetitive or spiritual drive whatsoever to be able to live in communistic poverty, without marital or familial relationships. Plato says that it would be impossible for the soldier and worker classes to live under such a communistic system, so why should the guardians not only find it possible, but also desirable?

Julia Annas has also pointed out that Plato provides two alternative interpretations of his theory of virtue in the individual, without firmly committing to either. By a liberal reading, Plato is saying that so long as wealth, health, good food etc. contribute to or supplement the realisation of a person's virtue, then their life is a good one (e.g. if a businessman's virtue is running a bookshop, then it matters not if he happens to make a lot of money out of it, and indeed the money may contribute towards his running an even better bookshop). A more austere version, according to Annas, says that money, good health etc. have no value in themselves, and it is only in my intelligent use of them that my life can become better, rather than their presense. If we assume Plato intended the latter, then one can imagine a proper Guardian not minding his communistic lifestyle, even though the psychology is dubiously stoical.

Leo Strauss has advanced the argument that, since Plato seems to suggest at times that parts of his systems are impossible, he is only advancing the two state models as devices of argumentation, not to be taken seriously themselves, but to be taken seriously as examples of what one could do wrong. But though Plato clearly seems to construct the first model as an example of an unbalanced state, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the second states basis on Plato's ethical theories described elsewhere, and with the development of the second state in Laws.

Another interesting feature of the guardian class is that women should have an equal role to men. Whether this is because they are freed up from their familial role, or vice versa, is uncertain. But this hardly makes Plato's state a feminist one, since elsewhere in the Republic he is disparaging towards women and "womanish" attitudes. However his arguments for this gender equality are plausibly feminist; he first argues that their gender is irrelevant to the work the guardians do (i.e. the physical differences); secondly, Plato's attention to the sexual appetites of the guardian class show a kind of proto-feminist concern for this force in political philosophy.

Plato, education and myths

An unusual but important aspect of Plato's politics was the method of education, borne out in his own work. Plato saw art, and in particular story telling, as the ideal way to communicate philosophy and other less important (but not trades-based) knowledge. His myth of the cave, used to explain the philosophers' special access to the forms, is a perfect example, which can be used to further explain why the guardian class is necessary. He thought that art should only represent the good things in society, and that artistic value ought to be thought of in terms of a piece's contribution to society.

Aristotle's political philosophy

Key themes

• To study politics, you study the polis
• The state as primary, the individual as secondary
• Justification of inequality (& its biological basis)
• Ethics is a matter of building good habits

Man is a political animal

Aristotle's point of departure is the simple statement above, which, in the context of the text, is really saying that man is at his best when he dwells in a polis. He claims that nature has seen it fit to give man the power of speech, and so more than any other species he has the capacity to communicate moral concepts such as justice.

Aristotle therefore concerns himself with the kind of polis that would bring out the best in its citizens and its wider population (bearing in mind that only about one sixth of Athenians were citizens). He saw politics as a science, and just as a physician would study the body, Aristotle sought to study the state. Once the nature of the state can be understood, the politician can begin to frame the constitution of the state in its laws, customs (nomoi) and institutions, and then to protect it through education and legislation.

The first book of Politics describes the nature of any polis, in describing social and political relations that naturally develop between humans. The first relation that develops, he says, is that between man and woman, "that the race may continue" (26-27). Straight away, he also describes the nature of this relationship as that between master and subject, and claims that nature makes each thing for a single use. At the same time, the relationship of master and slave develops, that the two might survive; Aristotle gives little reason to believe that one couldn't survive without the other, and his insistence on this relationship may be seen more as a reflection of Athens than a key part of his philosophy. The second major relationship he describes is the family, which is again composed of the master (husband) and the subjects (wife and children), and which is established for the provision of man's everyday wants. As families unite in villages, the state emerges, as the first self-sufficing political community, which exists for the sake of a good life.

So already Aristotle has made several key claims:

1. that we must look at nature to understand the nature of man and politics
2. that every political relationship is naturally one of master and subject
3. that the state ultimately exists for the sake of a good life

The state as prior to the individual

Despite analysing these relationships from marriage to the state, Aristotle then insists that the state is prior to the family and to the individual, since the individual couldn't survive without the state, whilst the state could survive without one particular individual or family. A consequence of this is that the value of any individual, and in particular that of the slave or the woman, to the state is prior to their own value to themselves.

The second defence for this position is more teleological. Because Aristotle states that man is by nature political, and is equipped with the capacity to communicate and discuss moral concepts, he sees that as man's highest virtue (just as sharpness is the virtue of a knife). Since man can't exercise this virtue alone, nor fully in a marriage nor a family nor a small village, man must be most complete and virtuous in a city state.

The second reason seems problematic for those who aren't supposed to be citizens, and so who aren't virtuous because they discuss justice. For women, children and slaves, virtue is to be found in being good at other things, most of which can be done fully in a family or small village. However, given that women, children and slaves can be as virtuous in a city state, Aristotle has no problem in suggesting that they ought to dwell in the city state for the sake of the citizens.

Inequality and naturalism

Inequality is a key feature of Aristotle's thought. He claims that people are not, by nature, born equal, and so trying to treat them as equals in any respect is unnatural, and therefore unjust. Though we may rail at this in a society that emphasises equality, some truth can be found in what he says when looking at, for example, our education systems, in which some would simply not benefit from studying an academic subject at University. But Aristotle goes further to say that if humans are unequal in one or two respects, the ought to be treated unequally in all respects in the polis. And so if a person is born a natural slave, they ought to be treated a slave, such that they can fulfil their nature.

It's important to note that Aristotle doesn't defend the kind of slavery that was practised in Athens in his time. If a man is made a slave without being a natural slave, that, Aristotle says, is unjust. But this introduces a major problem with Aristotle's naturalism: how can you tell whether somebody is naturally a slave? History and literature are full of examples of people who have suddenly excelled later in life, and so it would seem obvious that determining a person's nature at birth, or even at the age of 18, would be premature. Given that Aristotle's education system is designed for specific kinds of people, one can assume that the judgement would have to be made in childhood.

There is a further problem with Aristotle's naturalism: he seems to be equivocating when discussing "nature". In Physics he describes 'nature' as the set of laws that describe internal principles motion and rest. If the state and individuals were understood by this definition of 'natural', then both would develop according to predetermined rules as a plant grows from a seed. In Politics Aristotle makes the distinction between nature and craft, and says that the polis is constituted by a craft, that of the politician. These two definitions cannot, as they stand, be reconciled, since on the one hand Aristotle is saying that states develop in nature and so are just, and yet on the other hand says that states are the work of a craftsman. His only answer, first proposed by Ernest Barker, is to say that the state is natural in another sense, in that it develops from natural human needs and desires for the sake of natural human ends, but that a good state can only come about by the craft of politicians

More references

For an excellent summary of Aristotle's politics, see the following entry into the Stanford Encyclopeadia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics.

And for a good, brief analysis of Politics, see these ClassicNotes.

What follows is a short essay on a particular Aristotle quotation:

'The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives'

(Aristotle, Politics, 1337a)

Aristotle wrote this statement late in his book Politics; it follows twelve chapters in which he describes and justifies the various features of his ideal state, before turning to education, which he saw as vital to the health of a state. By this statement he means to elucidate exactly why education is necesary, to specify its core subject, which is the moulding of citizens such that they live well under their particular form of government. He says this in reaction to what might now be considered common wisdom, that citizens should be educated such that they can critically appreciate the form of government under which they live, such that they might criticise and attempt reform, or find it agreeable and conform.

To put the quotation into context, Aristotle precedes it by stating that "the neglect of education does harm to the constitution", and previous to that that "the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth" (Politics, 1337a). In other words, Aristotle claims that the citizen ought to be moulded through education for the good of the state, and the state's constitution. He thus suggests that the state and its particular constitution are primary, and the individual secondary. Yet he also suggests that the legislator, who is symbolic of the state and its purposes, should "above all" be concerned with the education of the youth, suggesting that in a sense the state should be primarily concerned with individuals, making the state secondary. It is this apparent contradiction between the role of an individual and the role of a citizen that is the key to understanding Aristotle's quotation.

In the first few books of Politics, Aristotle describes the nature of a state and the reasons for its existence, as well as the various different kinds of state, and which are ideal. The state, according to Aristotle, is an inevitable political union "large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing... for the sake of a good life". (Politics, 1252b) Since the individual is not self-sufficing, and depends upon a state to survive let alone to seek a good life, Aristotle says the state must be prior to the individual. Leyden describes this as "priority of separation", whereby "X can exist without Y, but Y cannot exist without X" (Leyden, p. 46). To explain this priority, Aristotle refers elsewhere to analogy with the human body, in which each each organ can only fulfil its proper function when it is part of the body, the whole. This analogy doesn't quite work, since the body also requires each organ to function, but if we reduce the scale to the cellular, and treat each citizen as a cell, then we can see that the body can survive without particular cells, and so the state can exist without particular individuals.

One consequence of this is that the character of the individual will therefore be defined or influenced by the nature of the state, rather than vice versa, unless the individual is able to directly alter the nature of the state; even if the individual could do this, they would nevertheless be shaped by the state that they lived in up until that reform, so one must conclude that the individual is unavoidably a product of the state in which he/she lives. We must therefore assume that Aristotle was aware of this fact, prior to making the statement with which this essay is concerned. Whether or not the individual must be moulded to suit the state, the individual will have already been moulded to some extent by the state.

Now assuming the state is a good state according to Aristotle's criteria (an assumption that I will address later in the essay), it is right that the state's nature, or as Aristotle puts it, the state's character, be preserved. For it is through the character of a good state that good citizens develop themselves, each according to his own character. Human virtue, according to Aristotle, comes about through nature, habit and reason; we are born with the potential for virtue, we can come to know virtue through assuming certain taught habits, and we can learn to understand virtue through philosophy. So education in its broadest sense, encapsulating both formal state education and informal education in the family, is responsible for the realisation of virtue in citizens. As the state will inevitably imprint certain habits upon its citizens, and as it is responsible for formal education and also for the conduct of its families, the state therefore becomes responsible for its citizens' virtue.

If we return to the supposition that the state is prior to the individual, this relationship between the state, education and virtue becomes all the more important, since if the state educates its citzens poorly, they will fail to function properly in the state, and so will be unable to be virtuous, fulfilled and therefore unable to lead a good life. In other words, the state will have failed them. This apparently paternalistic responsibility is precisely what Aristotle is concerning himself with in the last books of Politics.

Of course this apparent paternalism can begin to sound a little detached, making the state seem like some entity separable from the sum of citizens that constitute it. So it is important to remember that "Aristotle's argument for political naturalism... asserts that the polis is a human creation" (Leyden, p. 56) and is governed by humans, who are selected not according to hereditary or financial considerations but according to the abilities of the individuals in the state. So it is not that an authority is being paternalistic towards its subjects, but that the political community is caring for itself and ensuring that it perpetuates and doesn't disintegrate through educational neglect.

One might also object that it seems unnatural and therefore, according to Aristotle's own theory of justice as well as according to intuition, unjust to force certain habits upon individuals because their political community requires certain proportions of certain virtues. But "when Aristotle speaks of the politician as making the citizens good by habituating them, he does not imply the exclusion of nature. Although the ethical virtues do not arise 'by nature' in the strict sense of Physics, they are natural in an extended sense which refers to the natural end of human beings, e.g. 'reason and intellect are the end of our nature'." So in fact, according to Aristotle's theory of justice, it would be in a sense unjust not to habituate each citizen according to their own ends, their potential for particular virtues. This is a particularly problematic response, since one can reasonably ask how the state will know what each individual's particular virtues may be; often a person may not find their 'calling' until they have long since left formal education, and so an apparent ability in, for example, tilling soil, might condemn a citizen to a life of tilling soil when their particular virtue could in fact be carpentry.

If the state, and even the individual, cannot be certain as to that individual's particular virtues, then it seems wrong to expect formal education in that individual's early years to habituate the correct character. If the proper functioning of the state depends upon each citizen finding their own correct function within the state, as an organ finds its function in an organism, then it is not in the interests of the state nor therefore in the interests of the constituent individuals to have the state mould citizens in formal education.

There is a further worry with the idea of the state moulding a citizen to its particular functions, and that is that the state may in fact be a bad state. Whilst Aristotle finds some virtues in almost all forms of governance, he provides a description of an ideal state, and goes into some detail describing the shortcomings of other forms of governance, and in particular the unnatural and unjust nature of their form. So why, if he admits that forms of governance can be unnatural and unjust, does he suggest that citizens support such arrangements through submitting to the kind of education I have thus far analysed? If his project is to encourage statesmen and citizens of unjust states to reform bad governance, then it would make sense to place a caveat in the quotation in question to say: "The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives, where that form is just". This problem underlines the inadequacy of the quotation in question; it presupposes an absolutely perfect state.

Bibliography

Aristotle, Politics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, 2001

Leyden W. von, Aristotle on equality and justice his political argument, 1985

Locke's political philosophy

After the English civil war, politics was dominated by the question of the "norman yoke" (i.e. the status quo), and what civil institutions should be like. Locke was a contemporary of many levellers, who fought for universal franchise and, to varying degrees, for the levelling of property rights and distribution, from those who called for universal rights to property, to radicals who claimed for the abolition of private property and the instigation of communal living. Opponents (largely conservative) to the levellers charged them with undermining the institution of property itself, and framed the debate in terms of property and its relation to the state. At the same time, the English were one of many nations exploring the Americas, and trying to claim rights to the land there in the footsteps of the puritans. Locke was one such property owner, and so his project can be understood both as an attack on the conservative elements of the contemporary debate, and as a defense of property as a socially necessary institution.

In stating the case for property, the levellers and their sympathisers made reference to the state of nature, and used theological arguments to suggest both that property is just and that the conservative landlords' use of land was fundamentally unjust.

Locke's writing was also a reaction against Sir Robert Filmer, and to a lesser extent Thomas Hobbes and other monarchists, who claimed a divine absolute right to power on the behalf of the monarchy. As Laslett has pointed out, Filmer's treatise Patriacha traced the lineage of kings back to Adam in the bible, and blamed Adam's fall from Eden on his attempting to exercise his personal liberty against the wishes of an absolute God. So one could say that Locke was forced to provide a theological basis for his arguments, irrespective of his own beliefs (though it seems more than likely that Locke did believe in the theological basis anyway).

God, and the law of nature

Locke's logical foundation and ultimate justification is God, who, according to Locke's interpretation of the bible, gave mankind collectively the earth, and whom all men are obliged to obey. His method is the application of reason, to find the institutions and social/political norms that will best promote the survival of all men.

Since God created us, we are all God's property. To Locke, this means that our first responsibility is self-preservation, since to alow ourselves to come to harm would be failing to uphold our obligation to God. We must also not damage others, nor allow them to come to harm else it conflicts with our self-preservation, since that is also damaging God's property. Stewardship of the earth and of other men is therefore implied, although our first duty is always to ourselves, and our duty to others only holds us insofar as they must exist. Locke's implicit logic here is that with property we care only that it continues to exist, which is an odd assumption, since one could easily extend Locke's basis for stewardship to say that God would want his posessions kept in good condition, and that we therefore have a further responsibility to ensure all people enjoy a certain level of prosperity and happiness.

Locke begins with the state of nature, by which he means the state of affairs prior to the formation of a political state, and where there are no requirements of positive law, only our duties to God. In the state of nature, Locke asserts, we also have the divine right to exercise our gift of reason to decide upon and impose morality. We therefore have the right to punish wrongdoers to return them and God's property as a whole from an immoral to a moral state of affairs, and to prevent further similarly immoral acts. In this, Locke allows the right to punishment to go beyond the right to self-preservation, to include the preservation of a particular social order throughout a political community, rather like Hobbes.

But though he allows for the right of punishment, Locke says that it must be decided upon by an impartial authority, such that the right to self-preservation is respected, and to impose morality isotropically throughout society, without problems of self-interest biasing decisions. Also, if we were to allow arbitrary power, we wouldn't be able to perform our duty to God; we would neutralise the problem of others threatening our right to self-preservation, but in doing so submit the right to an absolute dictator. So Locke suggests that any state of affairs more dangerous than the state of nature is immoral. In other words, to perform our duties to God, we must ensure that political institutions make life less dangerous, and more conducive to the preservation of all human lives, than the state of nature. The only way to guarantee this is therefore to have a contractual handover of authority to a government, one to which all would consent, and which violates nobody's natural rights.

Property

There are many conflicting opinions as to why Locke wrote an entire chapter defending private property. Whilst some suggest it was part of his overall project, providing a basis for the rights of rebellion, and others suggest it was merely a defence of the propertied classes against the poor, Lloyd Thomas, in Locke on Government plausibly suggests that Locke was trying to defend citizens from the monarchs, who tended to appropriate property to raise funds for wars and other costly ventures. Locke wanted to show that the monarch had to go through Parliament, i.e. through the people's representatives, to take any property, so that the transfer was based upon consent rather than arbitrary control, and didn't violate people's natural rights. Of course this can be seen as yet another justification of rebellion, and so it does seem to fit into Locke's project of delimiting and defining Government.

What follows is a short essay on Locke's thoughts on property

"They are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one anothers pleasure."

In this quotation, Locke states the origins of property, which form the basis of much of his theory of Government. To justify both a system that defends the individual from the improper actions of Government and a landowner from the claims of the less fortunate, Locke needed to explain why things, and in particular land, that begin in the commons comes to be exclusively owned by one or more indiduals. He did this with a labour based theory of property, itself based upon a special conception of God and his reason on creating man. But both his motivations and his arguments are suspect.

Locke's theory of property begins with God, who, according to Locke, gave the world to "mankind in common ... to make use of it to the best advantages of life, and convenience" (Locke, sections 25-26), and who also gave each individual property to their own person. This rests upon Locke's assertion that there is a creator, God, and that we have a responsibility to God to protect ourselves first, and our fellow men second. In other words, our own subsistence is our most important priority, closely followed by our own ability to enjoy a good life, followed by our responsibility to ensure the subsistence of other men (Locke, section 27). But whilst this may be taken either as a justification for communism or capitalism, Locke quickly states that "there must of necessity be a means to appripriate them some way or other before they can be of any use", putting property firmly in the control of the individual rather than the community. In other words, Locke says that for us to fulfill our obligation to God we must put property exclusively in the hands of individuals.

The theological basis of this first claim can be easily removed, since one can say that in order that we survive as individuals, and as a species, we must sanction private property; we place value on mere survival and further upon pleasure itself, irrespective of our obligation to a questionable Deity. This itself is, in Locke's writing, an empirically unfounded claim, since communist societies have sustained themselves, if inefficiently. Further, the fact that he claims that we require private property for our survival, and yet doesn't make any claims for commons to remain suggests that his account is lacking, since even the some of the most laissez faire economists today make claims for commons as positive externalities (e.g. parks). Locke doesn't object to collective property, so long as it is jointly owned and controlled by groups of consenting people. But then using this line of argument, one could suggest a defence of communism based upon Locke's theory, in that so long as everyone in the communist society consents to putting their labour into the collective pot, the communal ownership of property is legitimate. It then begins to look a little pointless, constructing only a defence of the concept of property per se against anarchists. But that is an aside.

Now that he has, in his mind, established the necessity of property, Locke needed to justify its origins. He wanted to show that even without any form of political union, in the "state of nature", we would appropriate property, and that this was entirely justifiable. He did this based on labour. When he claimed that we all have a right to our own person, he also said we have a right to our labour, and so it is our right to own the results of our labour. Yet whenever we work, we mix that labour with material from the commons, by, for example, planting seeds or cutting down a tree for firewood. In doing so, we face an obvious choice: we either allow our labour to enter the commons, or appropriate the materials we have used. If we accept Locke's account of the necessity of private property, it is obvious that we must appropriate the commons as private property.

In the state of nature this argument is quite compelling, since Locke's conception of human nature is broadly selfish, and so for me to survive I must be able to stop others from using my land so that I might cultivate my necessary food. But since he lived in a large political union, and wanted to produce a model for just governance, Locke saw the institution of property as the ideal basis. It is in property that we fulfill our basic obligation to God, and in which we find our first consensual transactions with other people, which lead to political situations and that also require at some point an executive power to protect from injustice. So the quotation upon which this essay is based is extremely significant, since it forms one of the bases of government insofar as it justifies that which determines the shape and extent of said government. Locke's theory of property "is not that the existence of private property serves the public good, but rather that rights of private property are among the rights that men bring with them into political society and for whose protection political society is set-up" (Waldon, p.137) It is also a theory of historical entitlement (Nozick, ch.7), and a theory of rights that emphasises that which is gained by virtue of individual action rather than by virtue of a state. In other words, Locke's theory of property sets the basis for a wide range of liberal theories, from those verging on the anarchistic to those found in mainstream liberal political parties.

As it stands then, the quotation may seem unobjectionable, particularly if one appraises its context uncritically. But when put into context, and when subjected to a critical analysis in context, it is more problematic than it may seem.

To begin with, Locke cannot explain how one comes to own an exclusive right to land that is required to begin labouring on it; one cannot, according to Locke himself, begin to cultivate land until one has gained its exclusive use. And yet one cannot, according to Locke, claim exclusive rights until one has mixed the land with one's labour. To get around this, one must either sanction the arbitrary occupation of previously unoccupied land, or sanction what Olivecrona described as a conditional justification for ownership, based upon the subsequent cultivation of the land (Waldon, p.174). Neither seem particularly satisfactory, leaving a lacuna in Locke's theory.

This may be explained by reference to another of Locke's thoughts, that "God has given all things richly" and that there is a "plenty of natural provisions" (Locke, section 31). In fact, he goes on to say that the "appropriation of land, by improving it" does not constitute "any prejudice to any other Man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use" (Locke, section 33). In other words, contrary to the standard theories of scarcity upon which modern economics are based, Locke's theory of property was based upon the idea that there would always be plenty to go around. That may be because at the time of writing this, Locke was investing in land in the newly colonised America, a vast land sparsely populated, and so the arbitrary occupation of unoccupied land would be unproblematic. But that cannot be said of today, and so it leaves the origins of property under question, undermining his whole project as he saw it.

There is a further problem with his theory of labour based property that arises from his dealings in America, and that perhaps provided a motivation for his work. The land he was buying up in America was frequently seized from the native Americans by extreme force, the combination of which with disease resulting in perhaps the first modern genocide. His justification of property based upon labour is laden with references to this colonialist expansion, first justifying the native Americans' right to "own" the fruit they pick and the animals they hunt, and then justifying the siezure of their land based upon their unindustrious waste of said land. To Locke, quanity is arbitrarily valued above diversity, and is seen almost as an end in itself, and so the "waste" of the land by the natives, who could support a fraction of the number of people Europeans could in an equivalent area of land, was almost like a crime against God. So he justified the colonialist expansion with two premisses: property is based upon labour, and value is to be found in quantity and industriousness. It is therefore right that the Europeans take the wasted land from the natives, work upon it and claim it as their own.

Even leaving his motivations aside, it seems that Locke's justification of property is almost as arbitrary as the claims to absolute power on the part of the monarchy that he was trying to challenge. Despite providing compelling arguments for why political societies ought to be based upon property, he fails to in the first place construct an indubitable basis for property, and so is open to attacks from anarchists and communists alike. That said, if one wishes to defend the concept of private property in any context, a labour based system still seems compelling.

Bibliography

R. Bellamy and A. Ross (eds), A Textual Introduction to Social and Political Theory (1996), Manchester

J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (2003), Cambridge

J. Waldon, The Right to Private Property (1988)

Rousseau

Background

Rousseau was born in the Calvinist republic of Geneva. At 16 he rebelled, ran away and converted to Catholicism, and then became the lover of a French aristocrat, where he studied in her library. After tiring of her, he moved to Paris and befriended the circle of intellectuals known as the Philosophes, who were quintessential enlightenment philosophers. Thus, the key points of his intellectual background was as follows:

(1) From the works of Bacon and Newton, enlightenment thinkers developed the idea that the whole world must be governed by laws, and that these laws were set by God
(2) That there were similarly a set of moral laws grounded in human nature
(3) That these laws were best discovered by looking at human needs (a priori) and by inspecting and observing the best of people (a posteriori)

The dominant view of the time was that man was at his best when he was civilised, studying the sciences and progressing materially as a result.

In 1750 he entered an essay competition, whose subject was the connection between scientific progress and morality (i.e. does scientific progress aid moral purity?). His essay argued that not only did scientific progress not make people more moral, but that it actually made them less moral. He asserted that scientific progress, and more generally civilisation, distorted human nature and caused moral decline. Despite being contrary to the enlightenment doctrine, he won the competition and went on to amend the essay and publish it as First Discourse.

The First Discourse and his emerging political program

The central thesis of the First Discourse is that perhaps civilisation has distorted and warped human nature, having a negative effect upon people. He claimed that basing any theory upon human nature as it can be observed in society is therefore flawed, and that to study human nature we must consider a hypothetical savage. Rousseau developed the idea of a noble savage who would have good health (due to no over-eating, drinking, laziness, etc.), no need to co-operate except for procreation, therefore no language and also therefore no foresight.

The noble savage has three main characteristics:
1) A strong instinct to self-preservation
2) Compassion (i.e. the capacity to suffer (passion) with (com-))
3) Instructive autonomy, a love of freedom

Objection: how we can we explain the transition from savage to a corrupted civil citizen?

Rousseau:
1) At first, savages require short-term co-operation for short-term gains, for example the co-operation of a hunting pack to hunt and bring down a large animal. Such co-operation would require some primitive language, and a degree of foresight (e.g. to say "you hide there, I throw this").
2) This simple inter-dependence would lead to pride and a consciousness of difference
3) It would also make sense for savages to shelter communally, leading to the formation of the family, the creation of gender roles, and romantic love
4) Pride would inevitably lead to conflict, which would escalate towards tribal wars; these would necessitate the development of metallurgy, agriculture and other more complex forms of social organisation
5) Inequality of ability would lead to private property and material inequality
6) Eventually the need to co-operate to prevent conflict and protect material interests would lead to the formation of the state

The inevitability of the state led Rousseau to ask a difficult and age-old question: where does the right of the state to govern others come from? He thought:

1) Not from conquest; might cannot be considered right
2) Not from normal contracts; they are manifestly unequal, since they sacrifice liberty for security, and bind future generations
There must governance based upon the expression of all citizens' views, upon the General Will. This would be a kind of social contract.