Unlocking Locke's Legacy: A Comment
| Author | Jeffrey M. Nelson |
| Published date | 01 March 1978 |
| Date | 01 March 1978 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1978.tb01524.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
UNLOCKING LOCKE’S LEGACY:
A
COMMENT
JEFFREY
M.
NELSON
Harvard University
IN
his recent article in
Political Studies
on ‘The Reception of Locke’s
Two
Treatises
of
Government’,
Martyn Thompson has assembled some very useful
bibliographical information.’ Yet the reader is often misled by Thompson’s
commentary, and indeed, the entire article reflects a methodological bias that
still cripples the history of political thought as it is practised today.
Thompson approaches his subject with the proper amount of respect
for
the
‘great
Mr.
Locke’. Because Locke was such a great philosopher one apparently
should expect his work to have received much notice from his contemporaries.
When it proves that Locke’s influence, that is, the impact of the
Two Treatises,
was not as great as assumed, when few critical appreciations can be found, he
must find an explanation for what he considers anomalous. First of all, he
assumes that Locke’s lack of influence derived mostly from the presentation of
‘too philosophical’ a justification for the Revolution (p. 187). Thompson is
confident that Englishmen primarily sought a less threatening, more legalistic
interpretation of the events
of
1688. Locke’s ‘notion of consent’ (pp.
189-90)
was too radical, too easily adopted by radical dissidents to be of comfort to
Englishmen. Secondly, Thompson appears surprised to find that the character
he unveils is ‘a Locke who is as significant for his
First Treatise
as his
Second
(p.
185). Accordingly he devotes much of his article to Leslie’s critique
of
Locke’s
First Trearise,
inadvertently raising the question in the reader’s mind of
whether the theories spun by the last of the patriarchalists is worthy of
so
much
serious attention. Both
of
Thompson’s assumptions, that the attention given
to
the
First Treatise
was significant and that Locke was ‘too philosophical’, are
erroneous and misleading. Both result from selective utilization of historical
data and unfortunate methodological biases.
If we examine the first known ‘extensive’ critique of Locke (p. 184), the
anonymous
Essay upon Government
of
1705,
we may begin to unravel the curious
complexity of the Lockean context. The
Essay
as cited by Thompson lacks the
subtitle, which, if we know early modern political literature at all, often proves
a source of enlightenment. The subtitle of the
Essay
reads: ‘Wherien the Repub-
lican Schemes Reviv’d by
Mr.
Lock,
Dr.
Blackal,
&
C. Are Fairly Consider’d
and Refuted.’ Who is this mysterious figure
‘Dr.
Blackal’? He is none other than
Offspring Bfackal, future Bishop of Exeter, a Tory Churchman (loyal, not
Jacobite) soon to become embroiled with Benjamin Hoadly in such a bitter debate
1
M.
P.
Thompson, ‘The Reception
of
Locke’s
Two
Treatises
of
Government
1690-1705’,
Political Studies,
XXIV
(1976),
184-91,
will
be
cited
in
the text.
Political
Studies,
Vol.
XXVI,
No.
1
(101-108).
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