Under Locke, and Free

In 1588, an English child was born prematurely during a panic as the Spanish Armada approached. The son, Thomas Hobbes, later said that his “mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.”

While England successfully repelled the Spanish fleet, a deep concern for security permeated the writings of Hobbes, including his foundational text in Western political philosophy, Leviathan. Hobbes was one of the first proponents of social contract theory, and he believed that human beings were doomed to have a “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” life unless they agreed to relinquish their autonomy to an absolute sovereign who would guarantee their safety. To realize peace, Hobbes deemed it necessary for the sovereign to control the military, the legal system, foreign policy, taxation, and the regulation of speech. Neither did laws apply to the sovereign, nor was the sovereign governed by morals because Hobbes did not believe in transcendental truth or good or evil beyond human self-interest. The singular purpose of a sovereign was to preserve the peace, and the only legitimate resistance to government was when a sovereign threatened a citizen’s right to self-preservation.

Fortunately, the founding fathers were not fans of Hobbes.

In early June 1776, a Committee of Five was appointed by the Continental Congress to prepare a Declaration of Independence. It included Benjamin Franklin, the future second President John Adams, and the primary author, future third President Thomas Jefferson. His respect for the ideas of English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke had a wide-ranging impact on the draft. Locke’s most essential works from the late 1600s, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Two Treatises of Government, and A Letter Concerning Toleration, were published anonymously to avoid charges of treason and censorship. He advocated for natural rights for all individuals, including life, liberty and property. While he was a social contractarian like Hobbes, he believed that government derived its power only from the consent of the governed, and that its only purpose was to guarantee the rights of its citizens and the public good. Furthermore, he was a proponent of a republican form of government with separation of powers and leaving religion to individual conscience, with those concepts emerging later in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration was also influenced by French theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Virginia Declaration of Rights written by George Mason earlier that year, and ideas from antiquity, including those of Aristotle and Roman statesman Cicero. While the Committee of Five made many edits, it is estimated that seventy-five percent of Jefferson’s effort remained in the final version approved on July 4, 1776, including these famous words from the preamble:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

It is only the pursuit of happiness that cannot be so easily tied to Locke. Jefferson may have added it to reflect Aristotle’s concept of flourishing, or it could be that Hobbes’ recurring theme of human desire for happiness and felicity from Leviathan resurfaced in a new context.

Locke died seven decades before the American Revolution, but his concept of government still endures, more than three hundred and thirty-seven years later and counting, under our consent in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Kevin Beardmore, Ed.D., is President of Southeast New Mexico College. He may be reached at kbeardmore@senmc.edu or 575.234.9211