Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction?

Abstract

For nearly two centuries, the mere mention of the “state of nature” was sufficient to provoke a controversy. Did the writer intend an historical reference or was he employing a fictional concept as a means of presenting an a priori ethical argument? The question, at least in so far as it applies to John Locke, has never been satisfactorily answered—although it has frequently been brushed aside as unimportant. Yet, many of the “contradictions” which seem to characterize Locke's political thought might be resolved if only we could be certain of the meaning he attributed to the state of nature.Lacking that certainty, we are left to choose from among the various meanings others have associated with Locke's use of the concept. First, it is charged that, if Locke did intend his portrait of the state of nature to serve as an historical account of the origins of government, it is bad history. Most political societies did not begin as Locke suggests. As one writer puts it “history and sociology lend but little support to this theory of free men entering into a compact and so creating a political group.” Secondly, if the state of nature is but a fiction abstracted from history, that in itself may be grounds for rejecting its usefulness as a concept. Marx, for example, is critical of the ‘state of nature’ approach to politics because it assumes in an abstract fashion precisely what must be proven by reference to concrete historical facts.