John Locke and the Theory of Natural Law
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1961.tb00823.x |
| Date | 01 June 1961 |
| Author | Raghuveer Singh |
| Published date | 01 June 1961 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
JOHN
LOCKE
AND
THE
THEORY
OF
NATURAL LAW
RAGHUVEER SINGH
Lucknow
University
THE
central importance of natural law
to
the political theory of Locke has
usually been recognized. But regarding the essence of Locke’s idea of
natural law and its proper place
in
his philosophical system as a whole
there
seems
to be
a
good deal of confusion. It is curious to note that despite
keen interest evinced by scholars in the philosophy of Locke during the last
thirty years or more and the vast amount of literature consequently avail-
able
on
him
now, his theory of natural law suffers from violent and some-
times most learned and elaborate dist0rtions.l The position does not seem
to have improved substantially even after the discovery of a wealth of new
material
in
the Lovelace collection.* The fact is that Locke has suffered
most
at
the hands of the historians of ideas who first classify individual
thinkers according to
fixed
and almost exclusive categories of thought like
rationalism-empiricism, idealism-realism,
individualism-collectivism,
&c.,
and then try to interpret them not by what they actually said, but by what
they ought to have said in view
of
their given philosophical label.
In
epis-
temology this Procrustean technique
of
interpretation has been respon-
sible for making Locke appear
a
typical empiricist or even an atomistic
sensationalist like Hue and Mill. ‘Thus it has been too common for
the critics and historians to visit upon Locke the sins of his latest descen-
dants and to read into his phrases about “experience”
a
meaning intelli-
gible only
in
the light of the sharper distinctions due to the subsequent
development.’* Just as in the history of philosophy he is often uncritically
1
See
the interpretation offered by Professor
Leo
Strauss in
his
Natural
Right
and History
(Chicago,
1953)
and also
his
paper
on
‘Locke’s Doctrine
of
Natural Law’
in
American Political
Science Review
(1958).
*
For the
purposes
of the present essay the most important document in
this
collection now
available
in
the Bodleian Library, Oxford,
is
Locke’s
Essays
on
the Law
of
Nature,
which has
been
translated and edited with an introduction by
W.
von Leyden (Clarendon
Press,
Oxford,
1954).
The value
of
this discovery for the clarification and amplification
of
some
of
Locke’s
ideas, which are somewhat obscure
in
his
more famous works,
is
great indeed. It would, how-
ever,
be
wrong
to say that the new data have radically changed, or even added any basically
new dimemion to, our understanding of Locke. There is little in these
Essays
of vital importance
which
is
not
either explicitly stated or implied in
his
Essay Concerning
Human
Understanding
and
Two
Treatises
of
Civil Government.
S.
Pringle-Pattison, Introduction to this edition
of
the
Essay
(Oxford,
1924),
p. xviii. Thanks
to the work of a number of distinguished scholars like Alexander C. Fraser (Introduction and
Political
Studlea,
Vol.
IX.
No.
2
(1961,105-118).
15640.2
I
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