John Locke is one of the most important modern philosophers. He contributed, most famously – though often misunderstood by people who name-drop him – to political philosophy; but Locke also made important contributions to philosophy more broadly (including epistemology, theology, and labor theory in economics). I have a comprehensive summary of Locke’s Second Treatise which you can … Continue reading John Locke: From Self-Preservation to Private Property
Liberalism
John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part V: The Myth of “Perpetual Revolution”
In the final installment of reading Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, we turn to the paradoxes of Locke’s theory of revolution. Most people are woefully ignorant as to what Locke is actually saying since they’ve never read Locke – they’ve only ever been told lies about Locke’s view of revolution. Locke’s revolution is not about breaking … Continue reading John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part V: The Myth of “Perpetual Revolution”
John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part IV: Statism & the Myth of Limited Government
In continuing our reading of Locke’s Two Treatises, beginning with ninth chapter now, we turn to Locke’s understanding of what the end of political governance, the commonwealth, and legislature, is ultimately for. That is to say, what does political society aim at? Essentially his answer was already given in the preceding chapters – peaceable and solitary … Continue reading John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part IV: Statism & the Myth of Limited Government
John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part III: The Origins of Political Society
The sixth Chapter of the Second Treatise is one of Locke’s more self-explanatory chapters. The exoteric reading is very straightforward: the naturality of parental authority is a precursor to civil authority. As Locke writes at the end of the chapter, “it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority, because … Continue reading John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part III: The Origins of Political Society
John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part II: Anthropology & Theory of Labor
The fifth chapter of the Second Treatise is arguably the most influential writing ever penned by John Locke. Chapter 5 deals with his anthropology, along with his defense of property and labor – and how “divine workmanship” led to property and how property and labor is leading us out of the state of nature and toward civil … Continue reading John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part II: Anthropology & Theory of Labor
John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part I: State of Nature & State of War
John Locke is commonly thought of as the “father of limited government” and the progenitor of the rights-based tradition of political philosophy called “liberalism.” He is often contrasted with the absolutism of Hobbes: Locke’s government is minimal where Hobbes’s government is all-powerful, Locke’s State of Nature is good and benign where Hobbes’s state of nature … Continue reading John Locke’s “Second Treatise,” Part I: State of Nature & State of War
Freedom from Harm: Andrew Jason Cohen’s “Liberalism Reconceived”
Andrew Jason Cohen has written and important book. While I will not quibble over issues of toleration and the metaphysical dilemma of universalism or monism vs. pluralism—wherein the liberal philosophical tradition while advocating “toleration” endorses metaphysical monism—Cohen’s “reappraisal” of liberalism as a philosophy promoting freedom from harm is not so much new as it is … Continue reading Freedom from Harm: Andrew Jason Cohen’s “Liberalism Reconceived”
Leo Strauss on the Three Waves of Modernity
Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was one of the most important historians of political philosophy in the 20th century. A Jewish emigre to America in the 1930s, Strauss made his name as an exegete of the classics (Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides especially; Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Maimonides among Arab-Islamic and Jewish medieval philosophers, and Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas … Continue reading Leo Strauss on the Three Waves of Modernity
New Money Liberalism vs. The Working Class
Unless you really, truly, believe the old and warn out canard that moneyed-interest is “conservative” you are probably attuned to the shifting realities of money/wealth in politics. First, conservatism has never been the philosophy of money—from Aristotle to Edmund Burke to G.K. Chesterton, there has always been a skepticism to economic doctrines promoting the free … Continue reading New Money Liberalism vs. The Working Class
The Suicide of Conservatism: Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West”
Jonah Goldberg is the most recent of a cadre of popular writers and academics, all of a decisively neo-Whig orientation and consciousness, who has written a defense of the greatest myth ever told since the publication of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum. Goldberg’s tale of the “suicide of the West” is nothing new. It is just … Continue reading The Suicide of Conservatism: Jonah Goldberg’s “Suicide of the West”
