This is it! The final chapter of Locke’s Second Treatise, “Of the Dissolution of Government.” Here, Locke covers a variety of ways that a government or a society can fail, and tries to explain under what circumstances a people forming a society may toss out their existing government and create a new one.
Month: February 2025
These two chapters cover two ways in which governments can make themselves illegitimate: through usurpation and tyranny.
Locke is careful to separate the two terms, so that usurpation is specifically the transfer of power to one entitled to it (even if that one restricts himself to similar powers and functions as the legitimate government).
Chapter 16, “Of Conquest” finally gets to the details of the hypothetical “just conqueror,” and covers Locke’s ideas of the restrictions and requirements for a conqueror to maintain the legal/moral high ground.
Some of the argumentation in this chapter is a bit confusing, so I start out with Locke’s summary at the end of the chapter, and then return to the more nuanced discussions after that.
I’ve been reading the essay collection Social Justice and the Indian Rope Trick by Anthony de Jasay, and despite his unusually opaque style of writing, there are definitely some interesting ideas here.
One that I’ve been playing around with has been his explanation of where the burden of proof must lie in determining whether an action is free or not.
Chapter 15 is mostly a short summary and restatement of Locke’s definitions of three different types of power.
However, there are a few nuggets of new ideas here:
1) Locke’s conception of “Despotical” power is not universally negative, as our use of despotic typically is today
2) The three different types of legitimate power here can be distinguished by how they occur: paternal by nature, political by consent, and despotical by forfeiture (due to legitimate self defense against an unjust invader)
3) The three different types of power differ in who they operate on: paternal operates between someone with property (the parent) on someone who is not yet capable of managing property, but will be eventually (the child); political operates between property holders; and despotical operates from a property owner upon one who has been stripped of the right to property.
This video is available on Odysee, YouTube, and BitChute.
Intro music adapted from a piece by Dvir Silver, courtesy Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/users/sonican-38947841/