Resistance and Economy in Dr. Anglim's Locke
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
| Author | Iain Hampsher-Monk |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1978.tb01522.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
RESISTANCE AND ECONOMY
IN
DR.
ANGLIM’S LOCKE
IAIN HAMPSHER-MONK
University
of
Exeter
As an original (and critical), reviewer of
Dr.
Anglim’s article the editor has been
kind enough to allow me to reply in print to the interpretation offered there.
My original problem was in understanding the status of many of
Dr.
Anglim’s
assertions about Locke. There are a number of ways of approaching a text in
political theory.
Dr.
Anglim’s interpretation seems to involve an exercise in
logical analysis. That is he seems to wish to isolate and exhibit the ‘state of
nature’ as a concept (‘a core’) around which a number of other concepts are
organized (‘depend from’?) and which can be shown to exhibit certain logical
relationships within Locke’s argument. However, his prose often obscures the
precise nature of the relationships being asserted. Moreover, his expressed
intention is to show Locke taking secular history and anthropology seriously.
This would seem to require distinguishing between statements expressing
historical relationships, and statements expressing necessary
or
logical relation-
ships between the concepts used. In my view he fails to do this, and
I
have tried
to show how this failure confuses his account of economic development in
Locke. However, he also fails to take history seriously himself in his own
enterprise of interpreting Locke. The success of an argument such as Locke’s
must depend on its actual content, and the content of an argument cannot be
understood outside of the historical-linguistic context within which it was
constructed. That is to say that a knowledge of the sort of issues discussed can
sensitize
us
to the sort
of
distinctions an author may be attempting to make.
In my discussion below I have picked on two issues to illustrate each
of
these
points. The second deals, as I indicated, with the discussion
of
economic
development in Locke, and how this must indeed take Locke’s awareness of
historical change seriously. The discussion below tries to show what can be got
from Locke’s admittedly imprecise treatment of ‘resistance’ by combining an
awareness of historical context with a refined logical analysis of the text.
Dr.
Anglim asserts: ‘Locke argued that any individual may decide to revolt
against political officials when he perceives a political violation of natural law,
and that any individual ought to act upon his solitary decision’. Now Locke’s
discussion
of
this topic is admittedly confused, but I am certain that he is more
subtle than this. If we look at the natural law tradition in which Locke wrote’
we find a number of distinctions being made, and the justification of political
1
Laslett’s short list of books known to have been available
to
Locke during the writing
of
the
Two Treatises
includes Grotius’
De
Jure
Belli
ac
Pacis,
Pufendorf‘s
De
Jure Naturae,
the
Vindiciae
Contra Tyrannos
and various civil war tracts. P. Laslett,
Loch’s
Two Treatises
of
Government
(London, Cambridge University Press,
1967),
Second Edition, Appendix
B.
Political
Studin,
Vol.
XXVI,
No.
1
(91-96).
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