John Locke's Second Treatise

Although Locke’s “The Second Treatise of Civil Government” is, as the name implies, a “treatise”, it is imperative to remember that he is writing within a historical context (Laslett) which guides his discussion towards his desired conclusion. Therefore, when studying his discussion of property, we cannot assume his goal is pure dialectics; instead, we must review what is seen as the goal of his essay and see if he correctly connects it to his premises. Following this pattern, I want to explore what I see as the goal of the his chapter concerning property, as well as how his various premises factor into achieving this goal, something I will argue he succeeds in doing. Since Locke’s main focus, throughout the treatise, is to establish …show more content…
The key premise to his treatise-wide argument is simply that one owns what it creates. From this idea, he states that Mankind is the property of God and must then seek to maintain their own preservation and the preservation of all Mankind (II, §6). When creating something, as God created Mankind, the creator has full control and ownership over his creation. This full control is in no way limited; it includes all forms of use, increase, and destruction. However, Mankind is not capable in creation of this form, so he has no way of attaining property to consume for his preservation. Luckily, God has “given the World to Men in common” (V, §26), so they may use its resources to preserve themselves. But, upon giving the world in common, there is no mechanism to take things out of common and into individual possession. Locke solves this by creating a degree of creation, or, “he hath mixed his Labour with” (V, §27). This differs from full creation in that it is only a kind of partial creation, since it is making something new from parts that are not. Similarly, because it is only partially creation, Mankind also has restrictions over what he does with his property. …show more content…
I refrain from claiming it is a complete success because its open-ended nature is also its weakness. By not clearly defining his theory to the fullest extent, Locke opens his premises to contestation. A reader may agree on a certain principle, but upon accepting that principle and realizing it results in abstract, poorly defined ideas, such as “mixing labour”, they may reconsider their acceptance of his original principles. However, except in this case, the theory is simple and clearly derived from his premises and would be acceptable to most readers, assuming they already found the previous chapters