Significant Silences in Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government: Constitutional History, Contract and Law

Abstract

It is increasingly common in modern literary theory to read that a text's meaning must be elicited from the textual ‘possibilities which arenot said’. At this level of generality, the proposition applies equally to the interpretation of non-literary as literary texts. In this paper, I shall endeavour to illustrate the usefulness of this approach by considering the meaning of Locke's argument inTwo treatisesin terms of things which Locke chose not to say. I shall argue two points. First, I shall suggest that many of the controversies which have arisen in recent years about Locke's meaning have suffered because inadequate attention has been paid to the precise character of a number of silences in Locke's argument. The persistence of an inadequate framework for understanding the character of Englishmen's appeals to an original contract, constitutional law and history in the late seventeenth century will occupy my attention here. Second, I shall suggest that attention to the details of Locke's most significant silences can cast light on current controversies about the intellectual status of Locke's argument. In particular, I shall argue that the current tendency to locateTwo treatiseswithin a context of coded, conspiratorial politics is mistaken.