Month: January 2025

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 14, Analysis and Critique

Chapter 14 of the Second Treatise is titled “On Prerogative,” and is perhaps the most dangerous concept in Locke’s idea of government, especially from a libertarian or voluntaryist perspective.

According to Locke, prerogative is the ability of the executive to promote the public good without a rule. However, the notion of the executive having powers not strictly limited where the law is “silent” is a dangerous notion, prone to all sorts of bad incentives, which even Locke admits.

Furthermore, we get to see an interesting application of prerogative and how the American founders seem to have actually improved on Locke’s thought, in the notion of eminent domain. It sounds crazy, especially from our voluntaryist perspective, but I explain in detail in the video.

This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.

Intro music adapted from a royalty-free piece by Clavier Music, courtesy of Pixabay.
https://pixabay.com/users/clavier-music-16027823/

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapters 12 and 13

Chapters 12 and 13 of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government cover the executive and federative powers, their goals, and their limitations.

The chief point to remember when reading this chapter is that the legislature is supreme insofar as it serves the ends for which the people created it, but the people (in a Lockean system) maintain the power of altering or abolishing the legislature should it fail to serve their purposes.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 11

At long last, Locke is getting around to outlining the limits of proper government. He’s hinted at many of these limitations in earlier chapters, but he tries to lay them all out here at once, even at the risk of being repetitive.

Unfortunately, we find a few instances of sloppy or open-ended language in this chapter that leave significant openings for a government to change from something at least somewhat legitimate into a downright tyranny.

Locke reminds us over and over that the Society/Commonwealth must be better than the State of Nature, but he hasn’t offered us many ways to deal with tyranny other than to make sure it doesn’t happen! He’ll cover tyranny in a later chapter, but the language here gives the government a few dangerous openings and offers it far too great a sense of permanence.

Intro music edited from “Price of Freedom” by Zakhar Valaha, royalty-free via Pixabay.

This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapters 9 and 10

Today we’re covering two short chapters: “Of the Ends of Political Society and Government,” and “Of the Forms of a Commonwealth.”

Both cover fundamental issues of Locke’s concept of proper government, so I would argue that they should have appeared much earlier in the book.

Aside from that, they help to clarify a few things that I’ve been harping on but Locke declined to address specifically until now.

“Of the Ends of Political Society and Government” lists the proper roles of governments, what freedoms people joining governments must give up, and what the responsibilities of those vested with governmental power are.

“Of the Forms of a Commonwealth” clarifies several acceptable forms of Locke’s conception of government, based on the choices of the majority as to whom, if anyone, legislative power should be delegated.

Mentioned article:
“The Myth of the Rule of Law” by John Hasnas
http://ereserve.library.utah.edu/Annual/SOC/3568/Bench/myth.pdf

This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.

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Philosophy Political Video Link

Locke’s Second Treatise, Chapter 8

Chapter 8 is titled “Of the Beginning of Political Societies” and attempts to argue logically how at least some governments must have appeared due to people banding together voluntarily for their common defense.

Locke tries to explain how the leadership he often observed in his day and in history developed, and how older monarchies differed from ones around his time.

I won’t say that his arguments are airtight, but if we take care to understand how the scope of Locke’s “state of nature” differs from Hobbes’s, Locke does in fact make some good points.

Locke refers to a couple of historical sources that I managed to track down:
Jose de Acosta’s “Natural and Moral History of the Indies”
https://archive.org/details/naturalmoralhist00acos/page/n5/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/naturalmoralhist01acos/page/n9/mode/2up

“Justin,” a.k.a. Marcus Junianius Justinus Frontinus’s
“Epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s ‘Philippic Histories'”
https://www.attalus.org/info/justinus.html

This video is available on Odysee, BitChute, and YouTube.