Chapter 5
Locke’s State of Nature as Sanctuary
In: The State of Nature: Histories of an IdeaSearch for other papers by Ioannis D. Evrigenis in
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Abstract
Although he identified Filmer as his primary target and never named Hobbes in the Two Treatises of Government, John Locke nevertheless declared in necessary to “consider what State all Men are naturally in,” in order to understand the nature and origin of political power. Locke thus adopted Hobbes’s device of the state of nature, albeit with certain crucial amendments. Foremost among these were the concept of trust, which Locke used to describe the relationship between God and human beings, and which served as the foundation for the right relationship between a people and its government, and a natural right to property, which can never be surrendered. In Locke’s framework, a human being’s duty of self-preservation towards God and her natural right to property provide the juridical basis for an “appeal to Heaven,” when an absolute and arbitrary ruler puts himself in a state of war with his erstwhile subjects. Hobbes had described the state of nature as a condition to be avoided at all costs. Even though Locke wavered between describing it as both desirable and dangerous, he nevertheless insisted that, for all its uncertainty, when compared to life under a tyrant, the state of nature could be seen as a sanctuary.