The Aristotelianism of Locke's Politics

Abstract

Those, then, who think that positions of statesman, king, household manager, and master of slaves are same are not correct. For they hold that each of these differs not in kind but only in whether subjects ruled are few or many . . . assumption being that there is no difference between a large household and a small city-state. . . . But these claims are not true.Aristotle, Politics, 1252a1The Power of a Magistrate over a Subject may be distinguished from that of a Father over his Children, a Master over his Servant, a Husband over his Wife, and a Lord over his Slave. All which distinct Powers happening sometimes together in same Man, if he be considered under these different Relations, it may help us to distinguish these Powers one from another, and show difference betwixt a Ruler of a Common-wealth, a Father of a Family, and a Captain of a Galley.Locke, Two Treatises of 2.22When political theory of John Locke first appeared in print in 1689, imposing authority of Aristotle stood ready to defeat it. So believed many of Locke's critics, at any rate. After his death in 1704, when it was confirmed that internationally renowned author of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding had also written anonymously published Two Treatises of Locke was widely taken to represent a distinctive type of political theory based on individual rights and social contract. Learned opposition to this sort of voluntaristic account of politics has often rested on Aristotle, the Philosopher, ancient authority on human instinct for sociability and hierarchal communities arising therefrom. Within modern academy liberals, communitarians, and republicans have again made a habit of pronouncing names of Locke and Aristotle in tones of antagonism. In broad outline reasons have not changed in or three centuries ago: first stands for natural-rights individualism and second for an organic conception of community.3What are we to make of this conventional opposition in light of awkward fact that second of Locke's Two Treatises, Of Civil Government, takes reclamation of Aristotelian conception of political power as its principal purpose? Locke announced in opening chapter of that essay that his chief target, Robert Filmer, had misunderstood nature of distinctively political relationships, mainly by ignoring differences between authority in political society and authority within family (L 2.1-2). Locke alleged that this basic conceptual mistake of Filmerian theory of and arbitrary government was source of its disastrous practical ramifications, which he had summed up in first Treatise as Chains for all Mankind (L 1.1). Filmer, in turn, had taken Plato's side in debate about political and familial rule which Aristotle had joined in opening lines of his Politics (A 1252a). Though a perceptive reader long ago noticed Aristotelianism of Locke's response to Filmer - Locke and Algernon Sidney were two famous men to whom Rousseau alluded as having defended Aristotle against Filmer's Platonic notions of power - no modern scholar has attempted a full explanation of significance of Locke's intervention in this debate.4The analysis below will show that Aristotle was classic source for both principal theoretic argument of Locke's second Treatise and method employed to pursue it, i.e. using analogies of power for conceptual comparison and distinction. But my argument for Aristotelianism of Locke's politics will rest on contextual as well as textual grounds. Not only was Locke pursuing an evident variation on central theme of bk. 1 of Aristotle's Politics; he was far from alone in doing so. This sort of project was by 1680s typical of radical constitutionalist writing in Europe, including not only English Whigs like Sidney and James Tyrrell but also a long line of writers on both sides of English Channel, stretching back at least a century, who deployed a particular interpretation of Aristotle in service of critiques of absolute monarchy. …