John Locke’s time is past, suggests Sam Gregg in The Public Discourse last week. Social contract theory has been the formative influence on American political thought, and our current debates can be broadly generalized as debates between the two poles of that tradition, with Locke on one end and Rawls on the other. Gregg points out the vacuity of Rawls; I would add that serious political theorists have long since recognized not only his vacuity, but his implicit political totalism (see, for example, Allan Bloom’s classic evisceration). And if this were just Rawls-bashing, I’d be having too much fun to contribute a response. But Gregg thinks we need to move beyond the social contract tradition entirely; Locke may be better than Rawls, but Gregg asserts that he doesn’t have what we need – a vision of human flourishing. Gregg would prefer to develop a new approach in which subsidiarity, not social contract, provides the formative theoretical construction.
Your humble servant begs to differ. The basic problem here is that Gregg, like most people, is talking about a cardboard cutout “Locke” that bears no relationship to the actual historical John Locke or his writings. There are, certainly, deficiencies in Locke. And I’m not sure whether “social contract” as such will continue to be the constitutive framework for political theory in the 21st century, given the state of degredation into which it has fallen. But I am quite sure that whatever framework does emerge will be one that drinks deeply from the Lockean well.
The origin of the cardboard cutout “Locke” lies in the secularization of Locke scholarship in the 20th century. The popular idea of what “Locke” stands for has been shaped by people whose understanding of Locke is deeply deficient because of their secularism. Locke confounds the secular mind because his project is precisely to build political and moral consensus among different kinds of Christians who are fighting over the social meaning of Christianity in a civilization that understands itself to be Christian. Secular readers who haven’t developed a sensitivity to the religious significance of the topics Locke deals with – and to the ways in which those topics were being discussed in late 17th century Anglican religious discourse – are simply not equipped to understand what is going on.
Gregg, of course, is not a secularist. But it seems clear to me that his ideas about “Locke” have been deeply shaped by the secularist consensus view of Locke that emerged in 20th century Locke scholarship. (Naturally I’m open to correction if Gregg wants to stick up for himself as a Locke scholar against this supposition.)
The interesting thing is that in the last generation, there has been a total revolution of thought among Locke scholars. This has been driven by the emergence of a new school of Locke studies that stresses the central constitutive role of religion in all Locke’s thought. The new generation of Locke scholars, having developed a sensitivity to the role of religion in late 17th century English society and in Locke particularly, paints a radically different picture of Locke’s political thought. In general, they find Locke to be a far more profound thinker than the older generations did, and far more relevant to the concerns of western – especially English-speaking - societies in the 21st century. (I have attempted to summarize this – in my opinion – much more historically accurate picture of Locke in a short little book that came out earlier this year.)
Thus, Gregg isn’t really persuasive when he quotes Robert Nozick asserting that Locke’s thought is deficient. Of course people like Nozick find Locke deficient – they have no idea what Locke is even talking about. You might just as well try to establish that Thomas Aquinas is deficient by quoting Richard Dawkins.
Gregg goes on to identify three problems that he thinks are inherent to the concept of social contract as a constitutive framework. I think they represent a misunderstanding of what social contract theory is, or at least what it was in Locke and other early contract theorists.
The whole idea of the social contract was a thought experiment. It can be summarized thus: “OK, you want to know why we have an obligation to obey the rulers. Let’s ask what would happen if we didn’t. Suppose no one had an obligation to obey the rulers. That would mean there would be no rulers. So what would society look like if there were no rulers? If you think seriously about that, what you discover is that you would need to create rulers – and pretty darn quickly. So it’s reasonable to say we have an obligation to obey the rulers, because if we didn’t have them we’d be obligated to create them.”
Starting from that as a basis, I think Gregg’s three problems can be shown not to be what he thinks they are:
One problem is social contract theory’s assumption that society is essentially artificial. This flies in the face of the commonsense observation that humans are naturally social and political beings.
But social contract theory, in its earlier manifestation, gave considerable weight to the constitutive role played by social institutions in forming the human person. Locke in particular insists that both families and economic institutions are natural and are primary constitutive frameworks for the formation of the person. And his approach to politics reflects this; his concern to shield economic institutions from interference is well known, but he is also strongly restrictionist when it comes to laws governing sexuality and marriage, in order to protect the natural institution of the family.
The picture you get of people in the “state of nature” entering into a “social contract” creates the impression of a shallow anthropology. But that’s because the state of nature and the social contract are thought experiments, conducted for a limited purpose and within the context of a much more robust social anthropology. The person who says “let’s suppose there were no rulers and we were all on our own, what would we do then?” is not saying that this is the way human societies actually form.
Another difficulty is that the people’s supposed delegation of authority to a government is—as figures as different as the natural law scholar John Finnis and the father of modern skepticism David Hume have noted—invariably a fiction rather than a real historical act.
But this is a straw man argument. The liberal social contract theorists never saw the social contract as historical, and their argument never depended on its being historical. It was Rousseau and the other illiberal social contract theorists who were offering what they took to be history. In Locke (as in Hobbes) the idea of the social contract is to express what would happen if political institutions were not present, not what did happen at some mythological “parliament in the woods” (as a friend of mine put it). Criticizing the social contract tradition on grounds that there was never an actual historical signing of a contract is like criticizing Adam Smith’s analysis of market incentives on grounds that there isn’t an actual, literal “invisible hand.”
A third problem lies in social contract theory’s conscious choice to eschew robust conceptions of human happiness, flourishing, or any substantive discussion of the proper ends of human choice. Much social contract theory assumes there is such disagreement about these matters that it is better to avoid them altogether (which itself invariably ends up privileging particular positions). With other social contract theorists, there’s often an unspoken commitment to relativism.
Here we strike a more substantive critique. Yet even here the critique fails to do justice to Locke. The picture of Locke that we are asked to accept, in which there is such disagreement about happiness that there is no sense discussing it, is radically oversimplified. Locke does argue, against Plato and Aristotle, that there is no one best model of life that makes those who follow it more happy than anyone else. Different people are constructed to gain happiness from different kinds of lives. Sometimes Locke did push this point too far.
Yet there is a great deal of discussion in Locke about what does, and does not, create human flourishing and make people happy in general. Diligent labor makes people virtuous and happy; fornication doesn’t. Thus the former should be encouraged and the latter discouraged.
To see how close Gregg and Locke really are, consider this:
But what if there are in fact conceptions of the flourishing of free, rational, individual, social, creative, and flawed human beings that can be demonstrated by reason alone to be more coherent than other conceptions? What would be, for instance, the implications for political economy if it could be reasonably demonstrated that entrepreneurship, for example, is not only central to wealth-creation but also an action through which I can realize virtues such as industriousness, prudent risk-taking, and courage?
That reads like it came straight out of Locke. The whole Lockean enterprise is to overcome the moral fragmentation of a society deeply divided over religion by using natural reason to persuade people to adopt shared conceptions of human flourishing (within the limits of reason’s ability to provide such demonstration). Entrepreneurship as an activity necessary for the realization of important virtues is in fact central to Locke’s political economy.
The primary difference (besides the use of the term “entrepreneurship,” of course) is that Locke filters this through the language of obedience to biblical command and natural law, rather than the language of virtue realization. If Gregg had acknowledged the moral seriousness of Locke and then argued that the rubric of virtue realization is preferable to command ethics as a framework for political economy, I’d have agreed with him. But let’s not just hit straw men.
One more point before I leave the subject. Of Locke, Gregg writes:
Issues of distribution according to criteria such as need are deemed beyond the state’s competence.
This is untrue. Locke insisted that because the purpose of the state is to preserve (and, secondarily, increase) human life, alleviating poverty is a legitimate basis of political action. The state has a responsibility to see to it that all the able-bodied have an opportunity to work, and none of the unable perishes for lack of support. At one point, he even went so far as to propose that if anyone able to work starved to death for lack of opportunity to work, or if anyone unable to work starved to death for lack of relief, whoever was in charge of caring for the poor in that parish should be tried for manslaughter. As I keep saying, the moral seriousness of Locke is in need of rediscovery.
June 27th, 2011 | 7:52 pm
“I would add that serious political theorists have long since recognized not only his vacuity, but his implicit political totalism.”
I’m an assistant professor of political philosophy at a well-known research university. This claim is false, period.
June 27th, 2011 | 9:18 pm
I define “serious” differently than you do. Period.
June 27th, 2011 | 10:06 pm
Is it just me that finds a bit of irony that an “assistant professor of political philosophy at a well-known research university” would go by the tag – “Selfreferencing”?
More like “lack of self awareness”.
June 27th, 2011 | 11:10 pm
Apparently “serious” means “dismisses Rawls out of hand.” And “there’s glory for you” means “there’s a nice knock down argument for you.”
In any case, Gregg is certainly too quick in rejecting the social contract tradition, and I agree his first tow criticism in particular are off the mark. He might have noted that Martha Nussbaum, a student of Rawls, has worked to incorporate a more robust sense of human flourishing into the social contract approach itself.
June 28th, 2011 | 2:06 am
@Greg: Who are you talking about, then? Can you name any prominent political theorist who has recognized Rawls’s “vacuity” or “totalism”? You pointed only to Bloom’s review. Please name five political theorists of any stature who you have in mind. Cite precisely where they say what you claim they say. If you can, I will eat my hat. If you can’t, change the post.
June 28th, 2011 | 9:08 am
“Prominent” is not the same as “serious.”
June 28th, 2011 | 9:35 am
This article, and subsequently this comment…
June 28th, 2011 | 10:08 am
Mr. Forster,
Thanks for this discussion. I hope there are many more cross postings with Public Discourse. Like your website they provide material of consistently high quality — just enough theory to add substance to topical observations without getting into the weeds.
Locke does require a second look. A wholly secular natural law suffices for superficial renderings of the social contract, but, as we see in the rapid late-20th century degeneracy of liberal democracy, when you lose the private policing of a robustly founded moral code, you gain the public policing of the state. In the aggregate of millions of political choices, even freeborn citizens will lean toward the false security of totalitarianism to avoid the terror of the state of nature (particularly in a voting polity of 50% women). Tocqueville is strong on this.
Our options are to reconsecrate the Republic to “Nature’s God” or continue meandering toward the siren song of soft tyranny. The horizontal “social contract” with our peers is an extended flotilla of hand-holders bobbing along the ocean, useful when the tide is placid, but subject to upheavals and rifts during a storm, and breakaways at will in the name of radical individualism. An additional vertical “social covenant” with the transcendent — i.e., “endowed by our Creator” — anchors a polity in place the way no human contrivance could.
A Christian sees this relationship in the horizontal and vertical bars of the cross, consecrated by the holy sacrifice and blood of the crucified. This is the rich heritage generous enough to allow officially disinterested deists aloof from the habits of direct public worship to leave unmentioned the cornerstone of the polity — i.e., faith in natural law through God — presuming it would silently remain without jealous maintenance.
Revival will require a Third Awakening since the mystic cords of Christian memory have frayed past usefulness, if never decisively severed. Our religion today, moral therapeutic deism, suffocates all advocates of direct faith, but a direct faith is the indispensable ingredient.
So heap even more gratitude on your website and Public Discourse, which seem to understand the necessity of unabashed evangelization and a strong, fearless, and rational ecumenism if we hope to reverse the long decline of the republic.
Please take my thoughts in their proper context, though. I am not an assistant professor of political philosophy at a well-known research university, but I do play one on the internet. Period.
June 28th, 2011 | 10:24 am
@King
. I am not an assistant professor of political philosophy at a well-known research university, but I do play one on the internet. Period.
LOL :)
June 29th, 2011 | 12:37 am
An alternative to social contract is to view the State as a development out of the ancient patriarchy, ultimately to the authority of Adam over his sons.
The libertarians use social contract to argue against moral legislation eg to Comstock-type laws against smut, to laws against sodomy etc. I am not sure if they are right even in the social contract terms, properly understood.
June 29th, 2011 | 9:48 am
It was Locke’s demolition of the patriarchal theory that really finally killed it off permanently. The patriarchal theory 1) isn’t supported by the text of scripture, in Genesis or anywhere else, and actually contravenes important scriptural principles; 2) makes it impossible to distinguish parental from political authority, preventing us from drawing any boundary between the authority and duties of parents and the authority and duties of rulers, which in practice undermines both; 3) cannot justify the existence of multiple political communities, but demands one world political commuinity under the power of Adam’s rightful heir; 4) cannot identify Adam’s rightful heir.
“Social contract theory” is a broad category, within which many approaches are possible. There are libertarian social contract theorists, like Nozick; there are classical liberal social contract theorists, like Locke; there are authoritarian social contract theorists, like Hobbes; there are weird unclassifiable social contract theorists, like Rousseau; and there are many others. So any number of approaches to morals legislation have been articulated within the broad scope of “social contract theory.”
June 29th, 2011 | 11:10 pm
Locke, Nozick, Hobbes, Rousseau– none of them a Catholic thinker so their theories are problematic on merely on this head.
Modern Americans have no experience of living in extended families and clans so the simplistic understanding of patriarchy. The points (3) and (4) raise no problem at all.
As for (2), what is the meaning of political authority within a Nozick framework?
And what about “General Will”?
There are people that say that State have only the powers delegated by people so that moral legislation is unjust per se.
Only a Father may impose moral legislation on individuals. That the States invariably imposed and still do impose moral legislation implies that patriarchal theory has value.
June 30th, 2011 | 1:30 pm
Unless I’m mistaken, Francisco Suarez and Robert Bellarmine both opposed the patriarchal theory. The Jesuits came up with some frequency in Sir Robert Filmer’s treatise that was refuted by Locke’s First Treatise. Thus, linking Catholicism and the patriarchal theory is not that easy…
June 30th, 2011 | 2:19 pm
Gian, why do you say that only a father may impose moral legislation on individuals? Such a sweeping statement could use some justification.
This seems to me to be the same as saying that all authority is paternal authority, a position that I think is simultaneously at odds with scripture, tradition (including Roman tradition) and human reason. Do fathers have authority to kill their children for just cause? Do governments have authority to control what their subjects will be taught to believe about all topics? If not, doesn’t that necessariliy imply these are two different kinds of authority?
Another way of asking this question: if all authority is paternal authority and the state has paternal authority, doesn’t that give the state total authority over everything? How can you justify the authority of, say, fathers – or the church?
June 30th, 2011 | 8:24 pm
Greg, then how about naming any five “serious” or “prominent” scholars who can substantiate your claim about Rawls? And do remember to provide the relevant cites.
The fact is you’re being evasive. You’d never make such a claim in print. In fact, in print you’re much more measured (as we all are). C’mon, you really ought to retract the comment.
June 30th, 2011 | 8:27 pm
Also, anyone annoyed by my anonymity is free to email me, including Greg. I’m not tenured, so blog commenting is somewhat dangerous. But private email is fine.
July 1st, 2011 | 7:07 am
The libertarians deny to the State the right to impose moral legislation since all the individuals in the social contract have equal standing and none may impose his morality on another.
To impose one’s morality, does it not require a hierarchy?. And isn’t patriarchy an authority that is most natural and even scriptural?
(Since children must honor father and wives must obey husbands).
I mean what else is there?. It is either this or contract between parties of equal standing or brute force of conquest or divine anointment or personal merit.
July 1st, 2011 | 10:08 am
Selfreferencing: I’ve already made a very similar claim in print. In my book John Locke’s Politics of Moral Consensus (which was published by one of those hoity-toity world famous universities) I commented that the Rawlsian school really amounts to a bunch of out-of-touch academics “debating how many primary goods can dance on the head of a pin.” I’d look up the exact quote with page reference, but frankly, I can’t be bothered because debating Rawls is fun but it isn’t worth a serious investment of time.
Gian: That’s circular reasoning. I ask you why you believe all forms of authority are patriarchal and you reply with “what else is there?” Well, there’s political authority, economic authority, spiritual authority, etc. The authority of a ruler involves a different sort of power than the authority of a father – the father may not kill his children even when they commit crimes, but it is a core function of the ruler to kill criminals. Whereas the ruler may not exercise authoritative control over the general formation of his subjects’ opinions, even if those opinions are wrong. In both cases there may be exceptions – the father can kill his criminal son in self-defense, for example, or the ruler may forbid systems of opinion formation that are manifestly hostile to the civil community (such as teaching children to disobey the law). But these exceptional cases don’t undermine the general point – indeed, they seem to me to emphasize it. So it seems pretty cut and dried to me that these are different kinds of authority. And the same could be said of economic authority (the authority of property owners and employers, for example) or spiritual authority (the authority of the church to preach the gospel and maintain church discipline).
And the content of the Bible seems to me to reinforce all of the above. I see no scriputral basis for conceptualizing rulers generally in terms of fatherhood, and much basis for resisting that framework.
All authority involves heirarchy, yes, but different kinds of heirarchy. The heriarchy of ruler over subject is radically different from the heirarchy of father over child – as the examples above seem to me to indicate clearly. I’m not saying any of these forms of authority isn’t heirarchical; I’m saying that there are multiple forms of heirarchy.
Even within the family, I would distinguish (as the Bible distinguishes) the authority structure within marriage from the authority structure between parents and children. I believe in the spiritual headship of husbands, but that is a radically different thing from the authority of parent over child. Just as a starting point, it is noteworthy that every single time the Bible admonishes respect and obedience to parents, it includes fathers and mothers equally. There is no point in the Bible that directs the obedience of children only to fathers; parental authority is shared and exercised jointly. That point alone seems to me to undermine the theory that all forms of power reduce to patriarchy.
July 1st, 2011 | 5:42 pm
[...] to beat a dead horse, but let me point out that Berkowitz correctly identifies Locke as the major philosophical source [...]
July 1st, 2011 | 5:49 pm
It does seem like Rawls scholarship has become something of a cottage industry catering to those who do Rawls scholarship. When you see discussions of him in MacIntyre (for example) its less about anything positive Rawls provides then it is about using his thought as an example of common confusions.
Now, I don’t want to sound too dismissive of the cottage industry quality of Rawls scholarship…after all much the same could be said of Vogelin schloarship. This may be a “too each his own” situation…though I cannot help thinking it seem more likely there will be serious discussion on Vogelin in 100 years than Rawls.
July 4th, 2011 | 5:45 am
Can a father punish his son when this son injures another son?
In a state of nature, doesn’t each individual possess right to exact vengeance ?
If one holds, with Locke, that the State only holds rights that are delegated to it by consenting individuals then with Miseans, you are left with a night-watchman state.
I do not think that all forms of authority are simply reduced to patriarchal. My only claim is that the State is a development of ancient patriarchy.
July 5th, 2011 | 12:48 pm
“Punish” is not the same as “kill.” If you don’t have the power of life and death, you’re not talking about political power. So until you’re willing to say (as Filmer did) that fathers have the power to kill their children, you will not be able to justify a patriarchal theory of political power.
Actually, no, for Locke “vengeance” is prohibited in the state of nature, as it is in civil society, because it is always wrong. One of the reasons Locke argues that you need civil government is to restrain the immoral passion for vengeance in order to create space for dispassionate administration of justice.
I would not characterize Locke as holding that the state only has rights delegated to it by consenting individuals. This is part of that larger, more robustly social anthropology that Locke scholarship is recovering. There is a world of difference between Locke and von Mises.
Your earlier comments implied that all forms of authority reduce to patriarchal (“what else is there?”). If you now want to retrench to a merely historical position, arguing only that in early, primitive societies it happened to be the case that patriarchal and political authority were exercised by the same person and only came to be separated later, you may be shocked to discover that you are now Lockean. (Read chapter 8 of the Second Treatise.)
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