The Environmental Turn in Locke Scholarship

Abstract

In this essay I document what I call the “environmental turn” in Locke Scholarship. I present an examination of environmental readings of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government over the last fifty years in order to suggest that the growing number of these interpretations, when taken together, signal an environmental turn in Locke scholarship similar to the widely discussed religious turn. I also argue that environmental readings imply a reassessment of Locke’s conception of the political sphere. Specifically, I argue that this turn implies that Locke has a relational environmental theory of political agency. Instead of supporting an autonomous conception of agency, the Second Treatise suggests human and material relations that fundamentally condition and position the political agent within a network of dependencies and obligations. I conclude the essay by discussing the limits of Locke scholarship in the environmental turn. I suggest that the implications and insights of the environmental turn remain limited because a full account needs to address the specific types of people who are considered political agents by Locke. That is, these authors often assume Locke is discussing all human beings, but as significant critiques developed by feminists and critical race theorists demonstrate, it is unclear if this is the case. Future writings on Locke’s environmental political theory will need to address these literatures in order to fully substantiate their claims.