Locke:
Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
In response to the above quotation, Alan writes:
Locke is arguing that we ought to act morally. I agree. But that is not, nor is protection for the vulnerable, a right. These things are contracted for in a society to varying degrees.
Locke is not making some mushy statement that "we ought to act morally." I understand where Alan is getting this from for several reasons. Chief among them is that most people have a tendency to see in Locke what they want to see.
Locke is arguing, not that we should act morally, but that we ought not violate God's will and law. Since God has granted us rights, violating them is a violation of God's will and law.
I draw your attention to a noticeable caveat in the above section. We ought not do such and such, "unless it be to do justice on an offender." In Locke's State of Nature, individuals have the right, and I'd argue even the duty, to enforce God's law. However, the enforcement of God's law by individuals, I believe the word Locke uses, is "inconvenient." Therefore, we enter into a social contract not to gain rights or even to ensure protection of them, per se, but to more conveniently ensure them.
It may seem like a minor, esoteric point in the big scheme of things, particularly when you are talking about a hypothetical state of nature versus how rights are actually secured in modern society, but I did want to point that out.
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4 comments:
Since "acting morally" simply means "doing what one ought to do," saying that one "ought to act morally" is a tautology. It's simply saying "one ought to do what one ought to do." That's not necessarily "mushy." Tautologies are often the foundations of great truths. One occasionally hears people question whether one ought to act morally, for example, which makes as much sense as asking "is a triangle a triangle?"
Andrew:
Locke is not arguing that we should just act morally in some undefined way. He is making a specific argument about the source and nature of that morality. Alan's statement is perhaps a tautology, and very well may be true and the foundation of other great truths, but it oversimplifies Locke's argument into mush.
"Alan's statement...very well may be...the foundation of other great truths..."
It will be impossible to live with me from this point forward. ;-)
I wasn't disagreeing with your main point, FLG, merely pointing out the tautological nature of Alan's rephrasing (without agreeing necessarily that this is what Locke was saying), and pointing out that a tautology is not necessarily a mushy tautology.
C.S. Lewis, in his excellent essay "We Have No Right to Happiness" made a terrific argument about the Declaration of Independence's claim for a right to the pursuit of happiness:
"What did the writers of that august declaration mean?
"It is quite certain what they did not mean. They did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud. No society could be built on such a basis.
"They meant 'to pursue happiness by all lawful means;' that is, by all means which the Law of Nature eternally sanctions and which the laws of the nation shall sanction.
"Admittedly this seems at first to reduce their maxim to the tautology that men (in pursuit of happiness) have a right to do whatever they have a right to do. But tautologies, seen against their proper historical context, are not always barren tautologies.
"The declaration is primarily a denial of the political principles which long governed Europe: a challenge flung down to the Austrian and Russian empires, to England before the Reform Bills, to Bourbon France. It demands that whatever means of pursuing happiness are lawful for any should be lawful for all; that 'man,' not men of some particular caste, class, status or religion, should be free to use them. In a century when this is being unsaid by nation after nation and party after party, let us not call it a barren tautology."
Similarly with "we ought to do what we ought to do" or "we ought to act morally." This is an obvious tautology, but in a culture where people will ask with a straight face, "why should we act morally?," perhaps it should be said more often.
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