additional funding provided by

today we turn to John Locke

on the face of it

Locke is a powerful ally

of the libertarian

first

he believes,

as libertarians today maintain

that there are certain fundamental individual rights

that are so important

that no government

even a representative government even a democratically elected government

can override them.

not only that

he believes

that those fundamental rights include

a natural right

to life liberty and property

and

furthermore he argues

that the right to property

is not just the creation

of government

or of law

the right to property is a natural right

in the sense that

it is pre-political

it is a right

that attaches to individuals

as human beings

even before government comes on the scene

even before parliaments and legislatures enact laws to define rights

and to enforce them

Locke says in order to think about

what it means to have a natural right

we have to imagine

the way things are

before government

before law

and that's what Locke means

by the state of nature.

he says the state of nature is the state of liberty

human beings are free and equal beings

there is no natural hierarchy

it's not the case that some people are born to be kings and others were born to be

serfs

we're free and equal in the state of nature

and yet

he makes the point

but there's a difference between a state of liberty and the state of

license

and the reason is that even in the state of nature there is a kind of the law it's not

the kind of law the legislatures enact

it's the law of nature

and this law of nature

constrains

what we can do

even though we're free

even though we're in the state of nature

well what are the constraints?

the only constraint

given by the laws of nature

is that

the rights we have

the national rights we have

we can't give up

nor can we take them from somebody else

under the law of nature I'm not free

take somebody else's

life or liberty

or property

nor am I

free

to take my own

life liberty or property

even though I'm free,

I'm not free

to violate the laws of nature, I'm not free to

take my own life

or to sell myself into slavery

or to give to somebody else

arbitrary absolute power

over me

so where does this constraint

you may think it's a fairly minimal constraint, but where does it come from?

Well Locke tells us where it comes from

and he gives two answers

here's the first answer

for men

being all the workmanship

of one

omnipotent and infinitely wise maker, namely God,

they're his property

whose workmanship they are, made to last during his,

not one another's pleasure.

so one answer the question is why can't I give up my

natural rights to life liberty and property

well they're not strictly speaking yours

after all

you are

the creature of God.

God has a

bigger property right in us

a prior priority right

now you might say that

an unsatisfying unconvincing answer at least for those who don't believe in God

what did Locke have to say to them

well here's where Locke appeals to the idea

of reason

and this is the idea

that if we properly reflect

on what it means to be free

we will be lead to the conclusion

that freedom can't just be a matter of doing whatever we want

I think this is what Locke means

when he says

the state of nature has a law of nature to govern it which obliges everyone

and reason

which is that law

teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent

no one ought to harm another in his life health liberty for possessions

this leads

to a puzzling paradoxical

feature to Locke's account of rights

familiar in one sense

but strange in another

it's the idea

that out natural rights are inalienable

what does unalienable mean?

it's not for us to alienate them or to get them up to give them a way to trade them the way

to sell them

consider an airline ticket

airline tickets are nontransferable

or tickets to the patriots or to the red sox

nontransferable tickets

are unalienable

I own them

in the limited sense

that I can use them for myself but I can't trade them away

so in one sense an unalienable right, a nontransferable right

makes something I own

less

fully mine

but in another sense

of unalienable

rights

especially where we're thinking about life liberty and property

for a right to be unalienable, makes it more deeply more profoundly mine

and that's Locke's

sense

of unalienable

we see it in the American declaration of independence Thomas Jefferson

drew on this idea of Locke

unalienable rights

to life liberty

and as Jefferson amended Locke,

to the pursuit of happiness. unalienable rights

rights that are so

essentially mine

that even I can't trade them away or give them up

so these are the rights we have in the state of nature

before there is any government

in the case of life and liberty I can't take my own life I can't sell myself into slavery

anymore than I can take somebody else's life or take someone else as a slave by force

but how does that work in the case of property?

because it's essential to Locke's case

that private property

can arise

even before there is any government

how can there be a right to private property

even before there is any

government?

Locke's famous answer

comes in section twenty seven

every man has a property in his own person

this nobody has any right to but himself

the labor of his body

the work of his hands

we may say are properly his

so he moves

as the libertarians later of would m