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Is The Natural State A Good Idea

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Is the natural state a good idea? to answer this question English philosopher John Locke gave us inside through his writing on the Second Treatise of government where he wrote theories about the natural state of men and the government. In my opinion everything that the state of nature and the laws of nature stand for, are a bad idea and living in it would end up in chaos.

On his Second Treatise of government Locke starts by explaining the state of nature, where men are all free to do as they please as long as it does not interfere with the laws of nature. The state of nature is also a state of equality, where men posses the right to enforce punishments and be the judge on their behalf. Then he continues to explain the two types of liberty, natural Liberty, which is men being free form any superior power, and liberty of man …show more content…

This liberties are given to men because they are born free and equal, and it can only be lost by committing a crime or entering an established society. Locke stated that men can not enslave themselves, or place themselves under the absolute control of any individual. Slavery can only happen if a man commits a crime that deserves death, and now the man whom he wrong owns his live. Although man can not enslave themselves, men can become servants, someone who goes under a master power temporarily, but does not give up all his rights and property. Afterwards Locke continues to speak about societies, when men enter society they agree to give up some of their rights in order to live a peacefully. Now that they have give up those rights now the

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Locke’s foundation for all his assertions on liberty is “that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should be also equal” (Locke 8). With this comes “natural liberty” which Locke defines as “to be free from any superior power on earth,…to have only the law of nature for his rule” (Locke 17). The state of nature is something that all men are born into, but must leave to gain both stability and law because in the state of nature, as Locke write above, nature is the only force that rules man. Once one leaves the state of nature a shift is seen; now, “the liberty of man, in society, is to be under no other legislative power, but, that established, by consent” (Locke 17). Locke equates the “law of Nature” as being related to the “law of God” and it is here where Locke’s argument can be seen as divinely ordained, in the same way Louis XIV’s rule was vested in God’s power (Locke 7).

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He can choose his own path in life. " To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. " This quote shows the concept that individuals must be free to live their lives and to realize their potential.

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no one knows about the freedom of men. To have individual freedoms, you must free yourself from things that hold you back. Equality 7-2521 had his brothers and the council holding him back from his freedom and self-ego. Equality 7-2521 tries to show the council his invention.

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(Document 1) He’s proving that even though man is born free, there are restrictions and limitations to our freedom. This had to do a lot with the spread of Enlightenment ideas and how it connects to The French Revolution. The ideas of this Enlightenment era allowed people to start forming their own opinions about the government. This plays along to how the third estate felt about the first and second estates.

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In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke revealed his interests in new science, developing theories of education and knowledge (SMW, 34). One of the main points in his Treatise is that of the law of nature, where all men are in natural state of perfect freedom (SMW, 34). Locke argues, “Men being…by nature all free, equal, and independent,

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He wrote in this book that, “This fatherly authority there, or right of fatherhood, in our A.’s sense, is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, whereby a father or a prince hath an absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, and unlimitable power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his children and subjects; so that he may take or alienate their estates, sell, castrate, or use their persons as he pleases, they being all his slaves, and he lord or proprietor of every thing, and his unbounded will their law (Locke, 12).” He told people that there are rights own by every mankind, which can not be taken away by others, and he stated that government is needed for subduing chaos in the state of nature, where people protect and gather resources of their free will. To sum up, civil society is built upon need for protection of property, which includes people, and the rights and estates they own. Another important augment, the social contract, stated

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¨Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.¨ This is similar to Frederick Douglass because he lived his most of his life in slavery and then after slavery ended he chose to live his life the way he wanted. Frederick Douglass was an African American slave who wanted to abolish slavery after hearing the word abolish so many times. Douglass´s audience were many other African Americans who also said slavery was a bad thing. How slavery was bad for slaves and how it corrupts slave owners.

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Everyone shared the same natural rights 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” (Locke 38). Locke believed that people would come together and create a society where they are governed “for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property” (Locke 47). Locke’s focus was on the purpose of government protecting those natural

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Locke’s definition of liberty depends on whether the person is in the state of nature, in which people are “without subordination or subjection” (Locke 101) or if they have formed into a commonwealth, or whenever “any number of men are so united into one society, as to quit every one his executive power of the law of nature, and resign it to the public” (Locke 137-38). In the Lockean state of nature, men have a “freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons” (Locke 101). This freedom is still limited by what Locke refers to as the law of nature, or that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (Locke 102). He also defines the liberty of the state of nature as “not to be under any will or legislative authority of man” (Locke 109). In his form of commonwealth, there is more limited freedom, in which liberty is to “be under no legislative power, but that established, by the consent of the commonwealth” (Locke 110).

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25). Locke’s state of nature demonstrates a state which entails perfect freedom and the right to one’s own actions and possessions (Locke 2 sect. 4). He then

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Liberty has to do with freedom from force, power or influence like a foreign nation or ruler and also has, to some degree, to do with equality. When we talk about liberty we must distinguish between the diverse kinds. There is what we might call physical liberty which is predicated on external factors such as being free from foreign occupation and persecution. For example the Greeks viewed liberty as being free from the reign and rule of the Persian Empire. To be under the control of the Persians was anything but liberty.

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The State of Nature, although a state wherein there is no civil authority or government to punish people for transgressions against laws, is not a state without morality. To Locke, persons are assumed to be equal to one another in such a state, and therefore equally capable of discovering and being bound by the Law of Nature. The Law of Nature, which is on Locke’s view the basis of all morality, and given to us by God, commands that we not harm others with regards to their life, health, liberty, or possessions. This is because we all belong equally to God, and because we cannot take away that which is rightfully His, we are prohibited from harming one another. So, the State of Nature is a state of liberty where persons are free to pursue their own interests and plans, free from interference, and, because of the Law of Nature and the restrictions that it imposes upon persons, it is relatively peaceful.

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Locke is able to argue that although no person can hold material, in the natural state as theirs, there is a justification for the private property. He begins connecting the two contradictory views by defining the concept of owning one’s self. Each man has the right of his body and that body and being belongs to that man, or in Locke’s words: “Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself,”().

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and I control my destiny. How can I be happy when I am under someone else’s control? I want to act and express myself as I wish, not having someone controlling my emotions. Liberty to me means: I am free from the government’s power and limitations and I have the freedom to become whatever I want to. I have the right to own a weapon, a house, or a car.

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According to John Locke, it is not the Will of a human being that makes him or her free. The Will is simply a faculty of freedom, insofar as a person who expresses Free Will is simply acting freely in accordance with his or her desires. For Locke, It is the person who is free; he proclaims that “free will” is a misleading phrase, whereby “freedom” and the human “will” are two separate categories which must be clearly defined in order to be properly accounted for. A Person who is free may do what he or she wills. Freedom, for Locke, consists in a person’s power or ability to act or not act on his or her will.

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