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The whole function of rights in Locke's theory is to provide an independent criterion for judging the legitimacy (and not only the moral appropriateness) of government action, including legislation. It is this structural point about contract theory which constitutes the strongest objection against Tully's interpretation. (GF)

A review essay on books by Richard Ashcraft: Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton U Press, 1986); & Locke's Two Treatises of Government (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987 [see listings in IRPS No. 51]). Much has changed in the study of the work of John Locke since the days when Leo Strauss saw him as an acquisitive immoralist, & Crawford Macpherson described him as exemplifying seventeenth-century bourgeois liberalism. Richard Ashcraft continues in the vein of new studies of Locke in which Locke's opposition to any system of property that does not enact distributive economic rights has come to the fore. Ashcraft has undertaken vast amounts of archival research in order to establish the nonphilosophic context of those who, like Locke, attacked the defense of absolute monarchy in Robert Filmer's Patriarcha (seventeenth century). The earlier of Ashcraft's two books, Revolutionary Politics, presents the results of this research, & of his reading of hundreds of tracts written during the attempt to exclude James, Duke of York, from the succession to the throne of England at the end of the 1670s; the book is a monumental achievement, which will undoubtedly be the starting point for Locke studies for some time. Locke's Two Treatises develops Ashcraft's interpretation of Locke's views on property through a textual analysis based on the historical foundations laid in the earlier volume. Ashcraft's view of Locke as an economic radical is not borne out by biographical evidence nor by textual examination of his theories of political right & social obligation. The fundamental tension in Locke's thought lay in his attempt to use the radical, egalitarian requirement of individual consent to government in the service of the Earl of Shaftesbury's liberalism; the doctrine of "tacit consent" had to be developed in such a way that it could be applied to any government that pursued the public good. F. S. J. Ledgister

Jeremy Waldron's much noted book, God, Locke, and Equality, has put the topic of "God and Equality in Locke" at the center of many perhaps most, discussions of Locke these days. I am going to raise some critical objections to Waldron's interpretations, but all the more reason to begin by noting the very many things about this book that I admire.First, he rejects the insistence by many of the most outspoken Locke scholars that a proper understanding of Locke—or any philosopher of the past—must be purely historical—that it must have nothing to do with us or our concerns, questions, or problems. Professor Waldron cuts through this claim as mere arbitrary assertion.Second, many Locke scholars, often some of the same ones, insist that Locke's political writings must be understood in isolation from his philosophic writings, especially from his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke's editor, Peter Laslett, set the tone long ago when he pronounced judgment: "Locke did not write as a philosopher, applying to politics the implications of his views of reality as a whole." Rather, according to Laslett, Locke appealed to or drew off of preexisting "modes of discourse." This approach makes it very difficult to understand Locke as an integral personality, much less as a coherent author or as a thinker to be taken seriously. Waldron thus reopens the lines of communication between Locke's political and his philosophical writings and makes Locke a significant thinker, not just a corpse for the historians.

Patrick Logoras-Flavigny, Cambacérès et Locke.
P.L.F. étudie les rapports généraux et particuliers établis par Cambacérès pendant les discussions des trois premiers projets de Code civil, dont on sait qu'il fut le maître d'oeuvre (1793, 1794, 1796). Cambacérès s'y montra imprégné de la pensée de Locke, allant jusqu'à recopier de nombreux passages des traités du philosophe anglais. Pour démontrer cette filiation, P.L.F. privilégie trois thèmes : l'emploi du mot « nature » par Cambacérès, sa conception de l'individu, sa conception de la famille. Mais Cambacérès travaillait au milieu des circonstances révolutionnaires et il soumit la pensée de Locke à des déformations. Il trouvait dans celle-ci un guide commode pour répondre à des questions urgentes, mais aussi un cadre pour faire passer les idées auxquelles il croyait sincèrement : liberté, égalité civile, propriété.

Scholars overlook that Locke has two distinct concepts of equality entrenched in his political theory. By recovering the centrality of natural law in Locke, these two concepts of equality can be easily identified. The first I call "natural equality," which includes every human being regardless of rational capacity, each possessing rights to life, liberty, and property. The second is "law-abiding equality," which includes the subset of people who adequately recognize the dictates of natural law. This distinction is significant because it helps overcome the conflict in liberalism between universal dignity and the necessarily exclusionary character of citizenship.

John Locke suggests that all mеn in natural state are free and equal, their conduct regulated by natural law, or the law of reason. Unable to cope with offenders people enter original compact and then set up a trust-based government. When­ever government proves to be incompetent, or regularly abuses trust, or puts it­self outside civil society; and whilst obedience means demise of men and nation, individuals and civil society realize their natural right of resistance to preserve their lives, liberties, and estates, as well as the common good of the country and of all mankind. Locke voices his major political ideas in his "Two treatises of government", where he argues for the right of William of Orange to the English throne using the concepts of trust and prerogative.