Reading Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill (AA311)

• Nigel Warburton on Machiavelli and Mill
• Derek Matravers on Rousseau and Marx
• Jon Pike on Hobbes and Locke

Jon Pike on Hobbes and Locke

Thomas Hobbes and John Locke are two towering figures in the history of political thought. On AA311 students study the first and second parts of Hobbes's Leviathan and the whole of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government.

In these works Hobbes and Locke grapple with some of the toughest questions in political philosophy such as 'Why should I obey the law?' 'Can private property be justified?' and 'Is it ever right to overthrow the government?' Leviathan was published in 1651 and it shows clearly the impact of the English civil war on Hobbes. He gives a compelling and deeply pessimistic account of human nature and highlighting our tendency to turn upon one another in the absence of social control. This account gives rise to a distinctive theory of the nature of political obligation and the state. We need a strong sovereign, thought Hobbes, to stop us descending into a state of lawless hostility and conflict. Since we need a sovereign so clearly, we should obey the rulers we happen to live under, regardless of how they came to power and (almost) regardless of what they do. Hobbes builds up to this rather worrying conclusion in quite a painstaking manner, from some very striking claims about the nature of human kind, and anyone who wants to hold their own in political philosophy needs to come up with a response to Hobbes. Leviathan is a tricky, though a lively read, and I only tackle the first two parts of the work. The edition I use is published by Hackett with an introduction by Edwin Curley.

Locke’s Second Treatise of Government was written and circulated secretly several years before its publication in 1689. It is famous now for being a founding document of liberalism However, it is also a revolutionary tract, containing ideas that could have got Locke killed - and he declined to acknowledge authorship until he was on his death bed. In it Locke argues that government must be based on the consent of the governed, and that the people grant sovereignty to the rulers as a trust - which can be withdrawn. If it is withdrawn, then the rulers can rightfully be toppled. Locke gives us the most famous account of government by consent. But the fame of the account does not make it right, and so I look at both historical and contemporary criticism of Locke's account of consent and see whether it stands up. Locke also provides a famous defence of private property in the Second treatise. He says that labour is what generates individual property rights, and his argument is both flawed and - once it is reformulated - persuasive. I use the Hackett edition of the Second Treatise of Government, which is introduced by C.B.Macpherson.

Students should come away from this part of the course with a critical understanding of two works that are central to liberalism, and, indeed, to our understanding of ourselves as political beings.

Jon Pike

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