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Locke bases his moral and political philosophy on his doctrine of the 'law of nature'. Scholars have debated the content and grounding of this law and its relationship to Christian theology. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law's content are traceable to an unclear grammatical construction in a crucial passage of the Treatises of Government, which can be resolved by following out a related set of arguments in that work. The ambiguities of the Lockean natural law's grounding can then be resolved by the hypothesis, strongly supported by textual evidence, that Locke relies tacitly on the reasoning of a parallel passage in Hobbes. Lockean natural law rests on neither atheistic nor specifically Christian premises but on a hypothetical natural theology. Locke's conclusions from that natural theology represent an attempt to follow out Hobbesian logic while also tightening it up on one important point on which Hobbes himself appears to vacillate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harry V. Jaffa came to argue that the proper understanding of the American founding required a blend of Aristotle and Locke. The article in which he first made this claim contains Jaffa's own criticisms of this idea. These criticisms implicate the fundamental elements of his interpretation of the founding and help us grasp Jaffa's understanding of political philosophy and its relationship to politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary accumulation of environmental crises poses a radical challenge to the modern Western political imaginary and the history of political thought by unsettling its understanding of ‘nature.’ Insofar as our political notions, like labor, depend on this understanding, we cannot rely on them to orient ourselves anymore. This paper has argued a paradoxical return to Locke against Locke can help confront this predicament. The first part recovered from the critical scholarship on Locke the ways in which Lockean ideas about labor are enmeshed with assumptions about colonialism, gendered hierarchies, and nature. The second part argued no singular conceptual reconstruction of labor can do justice to its hybrid character, which the present predicament has revealed. The third part argued, by recovering what the Lockean heritage has obscured, this scholarship gives us a way into the knotty problems of the organization of labor and the structure of the political collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early iterations of his political thought, The Elements of Law and De Cive , Hobbes proposed a new account of the nature of the people. In Section 2 I describe Pufendorf's critical response. Pufendorf's theory of the people is a neglected aspect of the political argument of the De Jure. Just as neglected is Locke's theory of the people in Two Treatises of Government , though there is better reason for neglect in Locke's case, in so far as he fails in his major work of political philosophy to present anything resembling a theory of the people at all. In Section 3 I bring Locke's thinking about the people into clearer focus. In the concluding Section 4 I explore some of the weaknesses of his position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the special issue on Hobbes and Locke: Meaning, Method, Modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the religious innatism debate in early modern Britain, specifically focusing on the intellectual change beyond John Locke's influence. The author argues that the decline in interest in religious innatism was not solely due to Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, but rather a complex shift in religious and philosophical thought. The debate about innatism was motivated by the fear of atheism and the need to establish the naturalness of religious belief. Over time, the focus shifted from innatism to deism, and the role of tradition and revelation became more prominent. The author emphasizes that the decline of innatism was not solely attributed to Locke and that there is more to understanding his impact on philosophical and religious culture. [Extracted from the article]

Social contract theory has long been at the center of political theory, and one of the inheritors of the social contract tradition, liberalism, reverberates through contemporary political life. And yet, an overlooked element of liberalism are the biblical origins of social contract theory. Specifically, how the early modern political theorists were reading Hebrew Bible, and the kinds of interpretive transformations of Hebrew Bible that take place on the pages of works like Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, John Locke's Second Treatise, and more. Covenant is the centerpiece of this entanglement. When drawn from Hebrew Bible and read in the context of Jewish political thought, covenant has a very different meaning to that which social contract theories attribute it. This Jewish understanding of covenant concretizes a practice of politics that is constitutively dissenting and agonistic, in contrast to the command–obedience model typical of social contract theory. Furthermore, covenant loses its unique conceptual framework—thus its contribution to political thought—when it is secularized into a social contract. This Jewish conception of covenant offers a new way to understand politics and democratic practice through "covenantal authority" and its constitutively dissenting, agonistic, and circulating qualities. "Covenantal authority" captures the constitutive undecidability of who has authority over the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of “sovereignty” has its roots in the Latin phrase “SUPRANUS” and refers to the supreme power and will of a nation-state. In Islamic political and social ideas, it has been a subject of scholarly discourse. In Western political thought, sovereignty is often seen as a fundamental constituent of a state, alongside people, territory, and government. The idea has undergone several transformations, with prominent Western intellectuals like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau espousing its importance. In the 19th century, nationalism challenged the idea, leading to the rise of people's sovereignty, asserting that political authority comes directly from the populace. This concept has been a topic of contention within the Islamic intellectual tradition, eliciting varying perspectives among Muslim thinkers. The concept of political sovereignty has been a key part of Islamic political philosophy throughout history, shaped by factors such as the rise and fall of successive dynasties, the spread of Islam, and the challenges posed by colonialism and modernity. The evolution of political sovereignty is a dynamic process influenced by various political views, including those originating from Islamic social thought. The Islamic government is rooted in divine governance, prioritizing the role of the caliph, scholars, judiciary, and public input. Its fundamental objective is to serve humanity and establish global peace and justice. To address the concerns of the contemporary Western elite, it is crucial to recognize that an Islamic government is a holistic system that harmonizes worldly and spiritual dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simon Kennedy's book, "Reforming the Law of Nature," explores the secularization of political thought during the 16th and 17th centuries. Kennedy focuses on the role of the Reformed theological tradition in reshaping natural law accounts of the origin of political life. He examines the works of John Calvin, Richard Hooker, Johannes Althusius, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke to argue that Calvin, Hooker, and Althusius operated within a Reformed-Aristotelian tradition, while Hobbes and Locke rejected this tradition. However, some scholars question Kennedy's claims and argue that the development of new theories of natural law and natural rights crossed confessional boundaries. [Extracted from the article]

The unquestionable achievement of J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment was to describe the retention of pre-modern values in a modern society. Pocock was notoriously accused of decentring Locke and side-lining the Liberal Tradition. A more pertinent critique had it that he failed to articulate how civic humanism in the context of increasingly commercial societies produced more than Jeremiahs or Cassandras. This article explains how Pocock responded to his various critics by inventing the term "commercial humanism" in an effort to clarify the way in which classical virtue was modified in modern commercial contexts, especially by natural jurists and republicans. Commercial humanism proved controversial but stimulated one of the most original scholars working in the history of political thought, István Hont, to undertake a prolonged engagement with Pocock's revisionist ideas, which ultimately allowed him to answer Pocock's critics better than Pocock, whose voice remained too in tune with those whose view of modern political thought he had rejected. For Hont, Pocock's labours in the history of political thought remained less relevant to present politics than they might become, once the depth of eighteenth-century analyses of the relationship between wealth and virtue was recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a debate about the basis of allegiance to government that is obscured from view by the historiographical controversy about whether it is liberalism or republicanism that is the key to understanding eighteenth-century Anglophone political thought. This debate is between those who subscribe, more or less, to the principles of Locke, and those who subscribe, more or less, to the principles of Filmer. Taking the Hanoverian succession as my point of departure, I present an outline account of what I take to be the mainstream eighteenth-century argument about the origin of government, up to and including the aftermath of the French Revolution. It played out largely in sermons and occasional pamphlets, written by individuals who, for the most part, did not acquire significant reputations, even in their own age. I then turn to a succession of more familiar writers, from Hume to Burke, who sought to transform argument about the source of political legitimacy by abandoning the question of the origins of government in favour, usually, of considerations of utility. Yet, as they attempted to change the terms of debate about the principles of government, these writers made constructive use of ideas and arguments usually associated with Filmer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contest between "Lockeian liberalism" and "classical republicanism" as explanatory frameworks for the intellectual history of the American Revolution, and therefore of the present-day United States, has been one of the longest running and most distinguished in recent U.S. historiography. It also has major implications for the history of political thought in the North Atlantic Anglophone world more widely. Yet this debate was merely suspended when it was held to have ended in an ill-defined compromise. Although some U.S. historians expressed doubts and qualifications, attention in U.S. historiography moved on to other themes while leaving the initial problem unsolved. This article reopens the question; it suggests that a historicization of both these two categories is now both possible and necessary, and that their supersession will advance understanding of the Revolution. It seeks to help solve this problem by the same means that the debate began: that is, by re-establishing a link between U.S. and U.K. historiographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Myths of origin; liberalism; republicanism; concepts; Locke; revolution EN Myths of origin liberalism republicanism concepts Locke revolution 1 9 9 01/24/23 20230301 NES 230301 Most, perhaps all, states have "myths of origin": those semi-historical, semi-propagandistic accounts of their founding and (what are termed) essential purposes. In his "Republicanism versus Liberalism: towards a pre-history", David Craig emphasizes that the terms "liberalism" and "republicanism" were defined only recently; liberalism in the 1930s. Did Pocock's reification of "republicanism" have meaning especially in its binary opposition to the role marked out by U.S. historians for John Locke? Liberalism, republicanism, concepts, Locke, revolution, Myths of origin. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Journal of Social Sciences & Philosophy is the property of Research Center for Humanities & Social Sciences, Academia Sinica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this article is to think of the image of the atheist in the entries "Atheist" and "Atheism" of the Encyclopaedia and to trace the possibility of understanding the marks of Lockian thought. These traits are fundamental for understanding the way in which there was a change in the image of the atheist between the 17th century in England and the 18th century in France and how this change will positively contribute to a better acceptance of the non-believer in the center of modern society. To provide greater completeness to the text, it is divided into two parts: in the first, we will investigate the profile of the authors of the entries “Atheist” and “Atheism”; in the second, we will properly examine the two entries in the Encyclopedia and seek to detect the echoes of Locke's political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines how entrenched ideas such as 'state of nature' and 'traditional societies', as outlined primarily in the political thought of liberal imperialists such as John Locke and Henry Maine, cause modern colonial and post-colonial states to enforce a 'limit of the political'. It argues that such a limit of the political excludes from the political domain imaginaries of collective life shaped by communities that came to be categorised as tribal. By marking the influence of these categories on British parliamentary debates on Schedule VI of the Government of India Act, 1935, the arguments of Gopinath Bardoloi and his Sub-Committee Report on the 'Excluded Areas' of Assam, and on the Constituent Assembly Debates of India on 'Excluded Areas' and 'Partially Excluded Areas' in India, this paper demonstrates that a 'limit of the political' came to be enforced by the legal creation and maintenance of 'murky boundaries'. It defines murky boundaries as non-dichotomous boundaries drawn between both people and areas to demarcate the gradated manner in which those the modern state categorises as tribes are included, partially excluded, and excluded altogether from the political. This paper argues that such murky boundaries were created so that the state could organise its standoffishness towards routine administration, standardisation, and legibility of its diverse tribal subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education plays an important yet underappreciated role in resolving a classic debate in Locke scholarship. In An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Locke rejects essentialism, arguing that natural species, including "man," do not exist. This position rests uneasily with the liberal conception of man that informs his political thought, and scholars have long debated whether and, if so, how Locke's anti-essentialism and liberalism are related. While several proposals have been made, all must grapple with the fact that Locke's principal discussions of politics and anti-essentialism occur in different texts. The Thoughts helps to address this difficulty, for under one cover Locke shows how a proxy for anti-essentialism—human malleability—is related to liberal ideas. There, he describes how to transform rather malleable children into modern English gentlemen, but he also indicates that nature does not mandate a liberal approach to the development of human nature. The Thoughts thus favors the view that Locke was a conventionalist about his political liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is a philosophical reflection on questions of sovereignty, seen through a comparative analysis of the two philosophers; Thomas Hobbs and Samuel Pufendorf. The field of study lies between political philosophy and the philosophy of law. The review of the literature focused on the most prominent philosophers such as Machiavelli, Boden, Spinoza, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant and others. it serves for a broader and deeper recognition of the issue of sovereignty. Bibliographic research is oriented towards comparative analytical study. Basic knowledge of Hobbes' and Pufendorf's philosophical thesis is important to this topic, and the comparative analysis aims to show the discourse on issues such as the idea of objective social unity and the way of concretizing people's sovereignty. The comparison focuses on the form and content of the social contract. The basic issue is the relationship between popular (political) sovereignty and state sovereignty. The discourse emphasizes the nature of sovereign power and the problem of freedom, questioning the principle of representativeness. Between the idea of indivisible force and the power to do justice, sovereignty is placed in conflicting situations identified in the comparison. The study goes deeper into the discussion of the political-legal system and the concept of the rule of law. In the background, the relationship between internal and external sovereignty is a complex issue, where the essence of sovereignty is often violated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ryan Patrick Hanley makes two original claims about François Fénelon: (1) that he is best regarded as a political philosopher, and (2) that his political philosophy is best understood as "moderate and modern." In what follows, I raise two concerns about Hanley's revisionist turn. First, I argue that the role of philosophy in Fénelon's account is rather as a handmaiden of theology than as an autonomous area of inquiry—with implications for both the theory and practice of politics. Second, I use Fénelon's writings on the education of women as an illustration of the more radical and reactionary aspects of his thought. Despite these limits, the book makes a compelling case for recovering Fénelon and opens up new conversations about education, religion, political economy, and international relations in early modern political thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Amme Idaresi Dergisi is the property of Public Administration Institute for Turkey & the Middle East (TODAIE) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nationalism according to Hazony is the view that the world ought to consist of independent nation states, each constituted at bottom by the loyalty granted to it by its individual constituents in return for its nurturing and protecting the prior loyalties granted by them to their families, clans, and tribes. This view contains three unresolved difficulties. (1) It claims to provide a wholesale alternative to Lockean and post-Lockean constitutionalism, though unlike Locke et al. it fails to differentiate political from apolitical loyalties. (2) It cites biblical Israel as the model for loyalty-based nationalism but disregards the biblical prophets' insistence that national loyalty must be grounded in obedience to the (divinely revealed) law, not vice versa. (3) It limits what it calls the Bible's "political philosophy" to putative "natural laws" or moral principles, while overlooking the biblical authors' unobtrusive self-distancing from prophetic moralizing when, facing the prospect of their nation's long-term exile, they quietly encourage what amounts to a political–philosophical examination of the merit of biblical law as such, e.g., by calling it "your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two complementary themes that play an important role in contemporary South African political philosophy: (1) the racist tradition in Western philosophy; and (2) the role of ubuntu in regaining an authentic African identity, which was systematically suppressed during the colonial past and apartheid. These are also leading themes in Mogobe Ramose's African Philosophy Through Ubuntu. The first part concentrates on John Locke. It discusses the thesis that the reprehensible racism of many founders of liberal political philosophy has lethally infected liberal theory. This view neglects the distinction between genesis and justification. Political liberalism has since cleansed itself of the prejudices of its spiritual ancestors. Liberal human rights exclude racism as a matter of principle. The second part discusses the claim that the ubuntu philosophy provides a better basis for a constitution in a modern society than political liberalism. A major problem is that ubuntu is an essentially contested concept. Some philosophers consider ubuntu to be a moribund notion (Matolino); others see it as a vital concept par excellence. In the latter case, it is elaborated from sundry incompatible political views, ranging from African nationalism (Ramose) via humanist communitarianism (Metz) to liberalism (Mboti). Conclusion: as an essentially contested ideological concept, ubuntu should not be a decisive constitutional standard for the application of state force. In contrast, the constitutional model of political liberalism provides a reasonable alternative, as it is designed precisely to solve the problem of social plurality and ideological contest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'social contract' is a Modern political term that originated from Enlightenment thought in Europe. According to the Modern interpretation of the theory of the social contract, 1 the function of the government is confined to protecting the rights of individuals. As members of society, individuals are the contracting parties of the social contract. After the contract has been established, the governor will oversee the government's action and the contract outcome, as one side of the contract. By omitting the role of God from the scene of politics, the Modern social contract in the eighteenth century arose as an alternative to the political philosophy of Christian scholars. Modern philosophers who advocated the social contract, such as Thomas Hobbes (d. 1679), John Locke (d. 1704), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778), did not give God a role in their theory of the social contract, as though society had devolved into a sphere empty of God. Contrary to the Medieval notion of politics, the secular concept of the social contract that developed in the Enlightenment Era exiled God to the private sphere, arguing that the public sphere belongs to the will of the individual. The underlying premise was that the will of the individual and divine will could not coexist. Nevertheless, Quṭb al-Dīn Nayrīzī (1688–1759), an ascetic who lived before Hobbes, harmonised divine will, and the will of the individual in his theory of the social contract. He presents a Gnostic social contract in which God continues to exist. Based upon his Gnostic worldview, nowhere in the world and beyond is empty of the presence of God, and an exemplary social contract cannot neglect the role of God. This article aims to evaluate Nayrīzī's position as a Shi'a Gnostic regarding the theory of the social contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abū Zayd al-Dabūsī (d. 430/1039), one of the leading figures in Hanafite u'ūl al-fiqh, is the first who mentioned the basic and inalienable human rights in the history of jurisprudence. Al-Dabūsī, was the first scholar to introduce the concept of "ahliyya" i.e. the legal and moral capacity of men, as an important issue of u'ūl al-fiqh (the philosophy and methodology of Islamic jurisprudence), as well, he was the first to divide the ahliyya into two categories. This distinction was widely accepted in the Hanafi tradition after him. This tradition acknowledged that the "dhimma", that is, the legal personality in the modern sense, is the basis of the ahliyyat al-wujub, but unlike modern approaches, they have established a firm relationship between the legal/moral capacity of men end the duties of human beings towards the Supreme Creator. Al-Dabūsī determined the reason/intellect as the principle of understanding the divine speech, and he identified the dhimma as the basis for a person to be under legal and moral obligations. After that he stated that human beings are equipped with three basic and inalienable rights, namely 'i'ma (immunity of life and property), liberty and property, in order for reason and dhimma to function. Just as reason and dhimma were bestowed on the human being by God, these three basic rights were also bestowed by Him so that man can fulfill his duty towards humanity. Thus, the theory of basic and inalienable rights was expressed for the first time in world history by the Islamic-Hanafi legal theory. The Latin phrase ius naturale covers both "natural law" -which has an ancient historyand "natural rights" in Western legal history. While objective natural rights/classical natural law tradition is centered on duty and obligation, the concept of subjective natural rights/modern natural law is based on the idea of individual freedom and the sovereignty of the individual. The classical understanding of natural law goes hand in hand with the idea of order of things and the teleological conception of universe. Thus, the universe becomes a purposeful and moral order with all its elements. While some authors argue that modern natural rights are a continuation of classical natural law, others believe that the conception of modern natural rights represents a break with natural law. According to Leo Strauss, this transformation that started with Hobbes and Locke is a fundamental one that requires us to see the two as different doctrines. While Michel Villey started the modern understanding of subjective natural rights with William of Ockham, Brian Tierney started her origins with the works of canon lawyers, who lived during the 12th and 13th centuries, well before William. However, no researcher has established a link between subjective natural rights and the three fundamental rights of al-Dabūsī, who died in the first half of the 11th century. There are approaches that admit the conception of natural human rights is a Western invention, and seek the origins of this understanding in the thought of the 12th and the 13th century medieval Christian law. However, there are also approaches that although admitting that the concept of natural human rights originates from the West, argue that this conception is a modern invention. In the criticism towards the subject-centered conception of modernity, this idea emerges, and in this approach, the understanding of natural human rights is seen as an unacceptable idea as it is perceived as an integral element of subjective individualism. Since rights can only be an issue for individuals who can be conceived as independent individuals, socialist and communitarian thoughts have also seen the natural human rights thought as a characteristic element of liberalism and rejected them. Duties, not rights, are essential for such approaches. Legal positivists, on the other hand, undermined the concept of rights on the grounds that it was loaded with metaphysics. Three basic rights expressed by John Locke (d. 1704) in the Western thought which were the same as the list of al-Dabūsī became in time the core notion of the modern understanding of human rights. John Locke says that in the state of nature before the occurrence of political society, every person has the right to life, liberty and property, equally and inalienably. It seems that the legal-moral capacity (ahliyya) and natural rights theory, which al-Dabūsī expressed for the first time, and which later became the common understanding of Hanafis, was partially secularized and adapted by Locke into his own understanding of liberal rights, whether directly by him or indirectly through medieval lawyers. After him this conception was completely secularized and formed the core of the basic understanding of human rights we know today. Since social and political life is essential in Muslim societies, there is no need for an imaginative state of nature (status naturae) conceived by thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke. The idea of natural rights inspired the great revolutions in the 18th century. In the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, it is stated that all people are created equally and given some inalienable rights by God. In the French Declaration of Human and Citizens' Rights (Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen), thirteen years after this date, the natural rights understanding is accepted as a clear truth in itself, but no reference are made again to the source of these rights, that is, God. The idea of natural rights fell into disarray in the 19th century due to the dominance of legal positivism, but returned to the agenda of Western legal and political thought in the 20th century due to actual necessities that emerged from the two world wars. Still, there is no longer a metaphysical ground on which natural rights are based, so today, natural human rights are in a philosophical crisis of origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The United States Senate is radically unrepresentative. American citizens in populous states such as California, Texas, Florida, and New York have much less voting weight than citizens in lightly populated states. Senate representation is also significantly biased in terms of race, ethnicity, and color, as well as other constitutionally protected characteristics such as age and sex. Effective reform of the Senate, however, presents a Lockean paradox because amendment of its representational structure is prohibited by Article V of the Constitution, and the amendment of Article V is blocked by super majority hurdles. This Article proposes a Senate Reform Act to resolve this paradox. This reform would adjust the number of senators allocated to each state by relative population. It recommends a Rule of One Hundred to determine population units by which to allocate senate seats according the official decennial census, with a minimum of one senator per state. The reform would thus respect the principle of federalism and maintain the Senate at roughly the same size. It would yield structural co-benefits such as a more representative Electoral College and an easier path to statehood for underrepresented citizens in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere. The proposed Senate Reform Act finds its constitutional authority in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments. After explaining how the reform would work, this Article defends its constitutionality through traditional modes of interpretation: text, structure, history, moral principle, and legal precedent. It concludes with an examination of political balance and feasibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I document what I call the "environmental turn" in Locke Scholarship. I present an examination of environmental readings of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government over the last fifty years in order to suggest that the growing number of these interpretations, when taken together, signal an environmental turn in Locke scholarship similar to the widely discussed religious turn. I also argue that environmental readings imply a reassessment of Locke's conception of the political sphere. Specifically, I argue that this turn implies that Locke has a relational environmental theory of political agency. Instead of supporting an autonomous conception of agency, the Second Treatise suggests human and material relations that fundamentally condition and position the political agent within a network of dependencies and obligations. I conclude the essay by discussing the limits of Locke scholarship in the environmental turn. I suggest that the implications and insights of the environmental turn remain limited because a full account needs to address the specific types of people who are considered political agents by Locke. That is, these authors often assume Locke is discussing all human beings, but as significant critiques developed by feminists and critical race theorists demonstrate, it is unclear if this is the case. Future writings on Locke's environmental political theory will need to address these literatures in order to fully substantiate their claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Procesos de Mercado is the property of Procesos de Mercado. Revista Europea de Economia Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: In developing a theory of the first appropriation of natural resources from the state of nature, John Locke tells us that persons must leave “enough and as good” for others. Detailing exactly what this restriction requires divides right and left libertarians. Briefly, right libertarians interpret “enough and as good” as requiring no or very minimal restrictions on the first appropriation of natural resources, whereas left libertarians interpret “enough and as good” as requiring everyone to be entitled to an equal share of unappropriated resources, able to claim no more beyond this equal share. This article approaches the right versus left libertarian debate by developing a formal model that examines the welfare properties of different interpretations of the Lockean proviso. The model shows that underlying philosophical justifications for left libertarianism, when plausible assumptions hold, will actually be better served by a right libertarian proviso rather than a left libertarian one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary political theorists remain divided over (1) whether a right to secede exists, and (2) under what conditions such a right could be legitimately exercised. This study seeks to shed light on this complex issue by examining the works of two of the philosophical founders of liberalism: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. I will argue that while neither Hobbes nor Locke discussed secession directly in terms of the categories political theorists use today, we can discern important elements of their political teaching that contribute toward the formulation of two distinct forms of a secession right. In Hobbes' preservationist and Locke's institutionalist argument, we find a distinctively liberal conception of a secession right that can help us frame the parameters of our thinking about secession in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social contract is one of the most influential political theories in Western philosophy. Although the social contract theory is mainly associated with a number of thinkers in the broad history of social and political philosophy, I am particularly focused on the social contract theory proffered by two British philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. While the social contract theory has mainly been influenced by these British philosophers, little has been done in terms of appraising its key normative ideas from non-Western philosophical traditions. In this article, I examine how the social contract theory might be understood differently from a non-Western perspective, if values salient in African communitarian philosophy are properly understood. As I attempt to establish how the African social contract theory can be gleaned from African communitarian philosophy, I make comparisons and contrasts between the social contract theory in the African tradition and the traditional social contract theory in Western philosophy. I intend to make a novel interpretation of the ideals of the former that are implicit in the African communitarian structure. I seek to provide reasons why the African communitarian structure could be taken as the normative basis for a plausible social contract theory in the African social and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Veritas is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Was the Obergefell decision a refutation or an extension of Lockean political thought? I summarize three perspectives on Locke and show how these interpretations can elucidate the Obergefell opinions. I then argue that the dissenters have the better Lockean argument. I conclude by explaining why Catholics should view Obergefell through Lockean lenses. Locke shows us how Obergefell will lead to a direct attack on familial moral education. However, Locke can also give us tools tofight in the public square for familial moral education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Roger Scruton insists on the incompatibility of his conservatism and the fundamental liberal principles of individualism and consent, his political thought has much in common with classical liberal constitutionalism. This essay explores these relationships while arguing that particularly Locke's constitutionalism is more compatible with Scruton's ideas than he allows. Specifically, Scruton argues that authority necessarily precedes any individual claims, but Locke's civil society, in fact, subordinates individual rights to political authority and common goods. Similarly, Scruton's insists that the state is an end rather than a means, but his own account of the conditionality of allegiance approaches Locke's understanding of legitimacy in the practice of civic association. This narrowing of the differences suggests that a conservative teaching could begin with an education in liberal constitutionalism rightly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the following paper we will analyze John Locke's treatment of the state of nature from His Second Treatise of Government through the lenses of Eugeniu Sperantia's interpretation of the Lockean theory in his Course on Philosophy of Law. Criticizing Thomas Hobbes, Locke stated that the main difference between the state of nature and the state of war resides in a so-called law of nature, an interesting concept which belongs not only to juridical political philosophy but also to ethics. His main argument, that we have to leave the state of nature to establish a political society in order to preserve propriety, is valid also today, when capitalistic philosophy is under attack from many directions. Another argument presented by the English philosopher (the right to rebel) is more controversial but highly influential in the history of political anarchism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the origins and validity of the presumption that crimes ought to be punished from liberal philosophy. It covers the debate over the nature of punishment during the development of liberal political philosophy, citing the work of philosophers from the 16th and 17th centuries including Francisco de Vitoria, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke.

This paper scrutinises early modern thinking about our moral relations to ourselves. It begins by reiterating the too-often-ignored point that full self-ownership was not a position defended in Britain—by Locke or anyone else. In fact, theactualearly modern positions about the moral relations we have to ourselves have been obscured by our present-day interest in self-ownership. The paper goes on to organise the moral history of the self by examining the reasons available for prohibitingself-harm. Those reasons typically had their source in God, self, and others. Major divisions in the period arose over which kinds of reasons could be invoked and why. The defining feature of this intellectual landscape was the debate between ‘other-regarding’ and ‘dignity’ theorists, who differed over the moral status of the self and over its importance as a source of moral reasons. More dramatically and controversially, various freethinkers and sceptics questioned the importance of God as a source of prohibitions for self-harm. After offering an interpretation of this history, the paper concludes by noting some connections and contrasts between early modern and present-day moral and political philosophy on the moral status of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article recovers "evangelical toleration" as a neglected tradition in early modern political thought with important consequences for contemporary political theory and practice. Many political theorists dismiss the prudential arguments made by "proto-liberal" thinkers like Roger Williams or John Locke in favor of toleration as a necessary precondition for evangelism and conversion as intolerant, unacceptably instrumental, and inessential to their deeper theories. By contrast, critics of liberalism treat them as smoking gun evidence for an imperial and civilizing mission underlying liberal toleration. I argue that both sides underestimate evangelical toleration's genealogical and theoretical importance. Not only were evangelical considerations essential in shaping the particular institutions associated with toleration in England and America, the varieties of evangelical toleration represented by Williams and Locke shed significant light on the very different institutions--and intuitions--governing the expression of religious difference in liberal democracies today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most treatments of territorial rights include a discussion (and rejection) of Locke. There is a remarkable consensus about what Locke's views were. For him, states obtain territorial rights as the result of partial transfers of people's property rights. In this article, I reject this reading. I argue that (a) for Locke, transfers of property rights were neither necessary nor sufficient for territorial rights and that (b) Locke in fact held a two-part theory of territorial rights. I support this reading by appealing to textual and contextual evidence. I conclude by drawing a lesson from Locke's views for current debates on territorial rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of the notion of information in 18th century Great Britain, focusing on the thought of essayist Vicesimus Knox. Views of philosophers including John Locke, David Hartley, and Thomas Reid are addressed. Topics include the 18th century history of epistemology, the views of the philosophers William Godwin and Thomas Paine, and political aspects of the notion of information.

Following the rediscovery of the ‘Christ's copy’ in 1944, Peter Laslett's decision to use it as the copy-text of his edition of John Locke's Two treatises of government (1960) was, in more ways than one, a landmark event. It not only revitalized an entire generation of academic study in the field of Lockean scholarship and, more broadly, in the history of political thought, but has also had a lasting impact in as much as Laslett's edition has remained, since then, the reference text that scholars use, persuaded as they have been by Laslett that it represents ‘the version which would have satisfied Locke at the time of his death’. However, by re-examining the Christ's copy in the light of a near contemporary testimony unknown to Laslett, this article reveals that, with its three layers of corrections, the Christ's copy seems to be a richer palimpsest than what has so far been supposed, belonging as much to the francophone world of Huguenot exile as to an anglophone publishing schedule, and represents, as such, an artefact of transcultural relations. This article therefore challenges Laslett's interpretation of the nature and purpose of the Christ's copy, and thereby questions his editorial decision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In some libertarian's opinion, social rights are inexistent as 'rights'. In this paper, I will first identify some of the main libertarian's approaches to then show Locke's positions. This will allow tracing the conditions for the potential foundations of the economic and social rights back to the beginnings of the liberal thought. I argue that there is a contradiction between Locke's theoretical principles and the libertarian's radical approaches. Finally, I show how the need for an economic redistribution looking toward a greater political equality can be supported based on Locke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to illuminate the ongoing significance of Locke's political philosophy. It argues that the legitimacy of political authority lies, according to Locke, in the extent to which it collaborates with individuals so as to allow them to be themselves more effectively, and in its answerability to the consent such individuals should thereby give it. The first section discusses how the free will inevitably asserts its authority; the second shows the inevitability of the will's incorporation of authority as a kind of prosthesis, which in turn transforms the operation of the will; and the third treats the issue of consent, arguing that Locke is less interested in explicit acts of consent than in the norm of consent, in answerability to which structures of authority should be shaped so as to honor the beings whose capacity to consent is definitive for them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]