1. So I enjoyed the comments about ME in the thread below, but I don’t know what to do with them.
2. I, in fact, don’t agree that the big American choice is Locke vs. Tocqueville or how to mix the two appropriately. Neither is an American, to begin with.
3. What Americans need is a Lockean dogma! Dogmatic natural rights? If that’s what “we” believe, we shouldn’t be posting that oxymoron right here on the web where everyone can see it.
4. Locke more political than Tocqueville? He might be more politic or reserved. Or, thanks to Strauss, it’s all too obvious now.
5. But Locke’s chapter on PROPERTY is pretty theoretical and very deconstructive (especially when read in light of the ESSAY–Zuckert and esp. Lee Ward). God, contrary to what the Bible actually says, is made past tense and is said to teach nothing more than we were put here to enjoy ourselves effectively. And at a certain point God is replaced by the human invention of money, suggesting perhaps that “capitalism” will be the cause of the withering away of religion (see Mr. Jefferson on our Unitarianism of the future).
6. So Tocqueville faces an America where every heart is animated by the love of money. And so everyone understands the human being as essentially a being with interests, and so education is merely technical (universal literacy but no higher education and even no educating of souls [see the different opinion of the Puritans]).
7. But the limit to the American love of money and pop Cartesian skepticism about anything higher is the religion the Americans accept without discussion. That’s the DOGMA Tocqueville talks up. So it’s easy to see why he’s not about constructing some American civil religion that would empty even that dogma of its distinctive content. [NO time now: But the Straussians generically overstate and misunderstand the place of self-interest rightly understood in Tocqueville. It is true that it's a doctrine, but it's one that reconciles pride and love--more soon on that.]
8. For a different idea of who’s more political: Compare Tocqueville and Locke on the family. Locke is all for the emerging trend of grey divorce, and he’s equally for inventing your way out of the natural connection between sex and reproduction.
9. And compare Tocqueville and Locke on the importance of institutions that resist calculation and draw upon instinct to overcome the mistaken [Lockean] judgment of individualism.
This isn’t adequate or anything. But I only have a few minutes, as usual.
April 9th, 2012 | 9:29 am
Wikipedia says Locke found Jesus, again, on his death bed…or that he may have?
April 9th, 2012 | 12:06 pm
Waiting for more on your interpretation of how Lockes theory is a doctrine of virtue endowed by law ie birth control debate (or lack thereof).
April 9th, 2012 | 12:34 pm
Political considerations guide or drive Locke’s interpretation of nature in the 2T, including the discussion of property, which is based on the notion of the self–which is a construct, not a natural given. To be sure, the deep radicalism shows itself at certain moments, but I think it’s more exoteric in Tocqueville (chapter on general ideas, among other places). T comes much closer to entertaining openly the view that nature is nothing–which he doesn’t ultimately endorse, on my view–than does Locke in the 2T.
April 9th, 2012 | 8:56 pm
1) Locke never married nor had children. Therefore Locke has nothing to really say about marriage or the suitability of divorce.
2) Locke was a doctor, and a very early bureaucrat, who studied property and trade in a rudimentary fashion. He never visited America. Locke’s views on property are completly antiquated. (as it turns out american courts do not accept that peaches are real property, at least for purposes of the statute of frauds, in addition the sweat of the brow theory of property was explicitly rejected when the SC decided to get feisty.)
3) Locke was certainly brilliant, given the tools he had to work with in order to understand the world.
4) I am pretty sure I have a more developed understanding of Property than Locke did. I am also sure that with modern equipment I am or could be better doctor than Locke was. Agree or disagree with the politics, you would still be better off being operated on by Howard Dean or Ron Paul. Both of these Lockean doctors, have more current understandings of medicine, politics and property, and the tools used to navigate the world.
5) If I must choose a dogma I think I will pick Homo Faber. The religion americans accept without discussion is specialization, and the capacity to use sophisticated tools. “There is an app for that!”(r) Apple.
6) On the other hand I am not sure. In a wicked twist on the adage that you are what you eat, americans may be structured by the types of property they play/work/consume with. So maybe the choice is between Homo Faber (Patent) and Homo Ludens (copyright), and Homo Fama (Trademark) Productivity+Fun+Authenticity.
7) Therefore to be american is to be Homo Fama Ludens Faber.
April 10th, 2012 | 11:29 am
John, your points #1 and #2 are just a little bit ad hominem against Mr. Locke, don’t you think? Ad hominem points can be valid when someone is arguing from authority, but Locke doesn’t argue about marriage based on authority (I actually do agree with you that what he says about marriage is pretty crummy).
One example of an ad hominem that was valid (and damning) is Voltaire’s point about Rousseau: the man who wrote “Emile” with such an authoritative voice on how children should be educated in fact left the education of his multiple bastard children to others
April 11th, 2012 | 12:36 am
The realm of validity for Ad-hominem attacks is politics. The first ammendment allows what the Lanham Act cordons off.
But point 1 was more of an observation of Locke’s life choices. When it comes to raising children cold showers may be good. A divorce lawyer may in fact make Lockeian arguments on marriage. The already dead Locke of the DI, was revived when Jefferson was dead in the Declaration of Sentiments. Locke the proximate cause may indeed step in to speak for many living people who technically would be individuals or intevening actors whose actions among the sane severs the chain of causation.
I am more comfortable extending Lochner to its full forseeability, over the objections of serious con law thinkers who declare rightfully that its era is over. Lochner=Locke?
Obviously many priests give up marriage and then counsel about it. It is a humorous standard.
Rousseau I think is unfairly maligned. He was not the cause of the French Revolution. Gallatin who warned against and salvaged what he could of Jefferson’s embargo… Gallatin who I believe the department of the treasury circulars (available from national archives) show foresaw much of what Jefferson missed… Gallatin from his own writtings was motivated to come to America by Rousseau.
I will go further: Gallatin was superior to Locke, in understanding of Government and property. He was perhaps the only person who understood both Jefferson and Hamilton.
If you do want a bridge between Locke and Toqueville the early american to do it is Gallatin (even if, and possibly because he spoke with a french accent and was booted by the federalists from the Senate).
2) Comment 2 is not an ad-hominem, it is a statement of fact, minus the artistic liscence of refering to Feist v. rural telephone as the SC getting Feisty, but this is just fixing a modicum of originality in a tangible medium of expression.
In fact Locke was a very early bureaucrat. He was part of what became in 2009 the department for business, innovation and skills. But in his day it was simply Lords of Trade and Plantations, He was also Secretary to the Lords and Proprietors of the Carolinas. To the extent that anything in the two treatises is favorable to slavery or the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina is, this is only explanable by virtue of the fact that he was also a bureaucrat.
In addition Tocqueville was a bureaucrat. And while it is interesting that Carl Scott does not see Criminal procedure or Criminal Law as plausibly a constitutional issue…Nevertheless Tocqueville was like Locke for the French: interested in the administration of foreign territories (in his case issues with the colonization of Algeria)… But to cut a long story short Tocqueville came to america to study prisons.
Gallatin, Tocqueville and Locke are seemingly great if only because they were forced into thinking broadly. No real disrespect intended to any of these.
Note: despite knowing more about Gallatin than the Olsen twins, NYU would not accept me. This proves the primacy of Homo Ludens or having significant copyright clout.
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