John Locke Research Paper

John Locke believed in the Imago Dei, that is the idea that humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Since humans are thought to be created in the reflection of God, Locke proposed that the value of the individual is justified by the authority of God. This means that God gave humans the exclusive right to their body and because there is value in their body then there is value in their labor. From this, Locke reasoned that people have a right to private property, which is taking a good out of the commons and adding value to it through labor. Since these rights to life, labor, and property are given by God, human beings therefore, innately express these rights in the Law of Nature. Despite this, the Law of Nature cannot always provide

Locke stated that because God gave them the right to their body they have inherent dignity. God’s authority also provides the basis for why man had a right to their labor. “God and his Reason commanded him [man] to subdue the Earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of Life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labor”(V, 32, 291). From divine jurisdiction, Locke believed that the human person deserved to be free in his actions. Man had the right to determine his own destiny and chose what he sees as best for him in the bounds of the Law of Nature. Locke asserts that from God he has the “...liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not...”(IV, 22, 284). Locke's belief that a person is free to shape their future, while rooted in theology, is very relevant in today’s temporal society. People, excluding outlying cases, are able to determine where they want to go to school, what they want to do for work, and how they wish to spend their time. This means that people support Locke’s argument, that being it is man’s nature to seek what is best for himself, without the validation of God’s rule backing

Locke states that the State of Nature is a “State of Liberty but not a State of Licence”(II, 6, 270). This claims that the State of Nature allows all men live with equal rights, which is the State of Liberty, but it is not permissible for any man to encroach on another's rights, which would be a State of Licence. Since all men are equal, any man has the right to express legislative, executive, and judicial authority.People, under the State of Liberty, have an equal opportunity to defend their rights. Dilemmas arise from this since man is not his own best self judge and people are biased in handling their discretions. A man might wrongfully claim that his rights have been infringed and may incorrectly accuse, unequivocally attack, and scrutinize another man and therefore take the other man’s God given rights away. This is how the State of Liberty, where freedom is checked on an individual basis, descends into a State of War. Consequently, although man is superficially free, they are chained to worry over their rights. Due to this, the State of Liberty under the Law of Nature is similar to a State of Licence due to self-bias. Locke choses to constrain the Law of Nature from descending into the state of war by the intervention of a moral (God based)