I wonder if instead of “Lockerstotle” a more productive direction would be “Lockestine” – Lockean Augustine – inasmuch as mankinds predilection for political communities and relationships may find a better explanation as a fallen attempt to cobble together in the City of Man some vestige of what our natures (absent special revelation) recall of the City of God.

But then that would cut against the whole point of the enlightenment which was to extricate western society’s foundations from sectarianism.

On the otherhand, maybe that’s the problem…

…..ground in that it explores the possibility that marriage (and even family as a whole) is reduced to consent but he also chastens that radicalness by showing the somewhat horrible consequences. There’s a lot of rhetorical hyperbole there that both sells and subsequently limits the scope of individual autonomy.

The birth and rearing of children is not only beneficial to the polity (strictly “utilitarian”), it is forced upon people by nature. If human beings, by Nature and Nature’s God, have a certain nature, it can be only right – if anything is right – to answer to that nature.

Now, I’m not of the opinion that Locke accomplishes this for the following reason: When you look at the other two natural duties Locke supplies, they truthfully boil down to the preservation of self. Those duties are: First, respect the equal station of other human beings and Second, preserve your life. Why do you respect the equal stature of other humans? To preserve your life. You don’t want to make them angry, because when there is an abundance of goods (which there is in Locke’s S.o.N.) it is a needless endangerment (a vainglorious one) to oneself. Revisiting the Third duty, why are human beings called to bear and rear children? It has to do with women (remember, this is in the S.o.N.) attempting to secure the male for her and her progeny’s preservation, and manipulating the male sex drive to accomplish that end. (I am fully aware that this is a rosy view, but we do see such things in the animal kingdom.)

In sum: Locke makes duties to others out of the desire for self-preservation. He accomplishes this by placing natural man in a condition of material abundance – which therefore makes it unreasonable to do things that seem malicious to other human beings, there being no need. (And dangerous to needlessly withhold aid to others, which would view this as malicious.) These duties break down once a condition of scarcity develops, wherein the right of self-preservation asserts itself over any and all duties to others. And when, in such a state, men find themselves with no common judge, when political leaders find themselves in such a state with no common judge, this scarcity might even be used to justify the enslavement of other human beings.