Summary Of The Second Treatise Of Government By John Locke

In The Second Treatise of Government, Locke asserts that humans are born with a natural right to life, liberty and property. He further explains that these individuals are bound morally to respect the rights of every member of that society. Yet he acknowledges advances in society, which impair such state to exist. Locke believes that not all members of the state of nature will respect those rights and further emphasizes the need to create a social contract, which protects these rights. For the only reason a state, or government is established is to protect themselves from anyone who chooses to act immorally consequently preventing them from preserving their natural rights. For Locke, the most important of these rights is the right to property.
He highlights this by stating that “every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his” (Second Treatise, chapter 5, §27).
In essence, for Locke, by entering a civil society, citizens are giving up their executive power of the law of nature to the legislative in order to preserve their natural rights of life, liberty, and especially property.
Locke highlights that the supreme power in a political society is the legislative power, he emphasizes the fact that the people have the “supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them” (Second Treatise, chapter 13, §149). The legislative cannot, therefore, make the citizens do something they do not want to do, especially if it violated their natural rights, due to the fact that this was the sole purpose for the formation of government in the first place. For example, by asking citizens to surrender their land for the city’s subway, the government is taking away a citizen right to property. Locke specifically addresses this by stating, “the supreme power cannot take from any man part of his property without his own consent” (Second Treatise, chapter 11, §138). Since the foundation of the legislative is based on its original responsibility to protect the natural rights which all people are born with, in attempting to strip the citizens of these rights, the legislative is acting against their duty. Therefore, the power of the legislature must be taken away, and “the power devolves into the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security” (Second Treatise, chapter 13,
§149).
On the other hand, in Rousseau’s state of nature man is naturally interested in himself and so does anything possible to accomplish what he wants, not caring about what happens to others. But when one enters a civil society, one becomes conscious about what is good and bad and starts acting according to the general will. “What man loses through the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything that tempts him and that he can acquire. What he gains is civil liberty and the proprietary ownership of all he possesses” (Social Contract, book I, chapter 8). Rousseau rejects Locke’s theory that all humans are born with a natural right to life, liberty, and property; for he believes that property, in the state of nature, is a source of inequality. That is why, for Rousseau a civil society “substitutes a moral and legitimate equality to whatever physical inequality nature may have been able to impose upon men and become equal by agreement and right” (Social Contract, book I, chapter 9). Since each citizen is giving up the same rights when leaving the state of nature, all members are considered equal. When man renounces the freedom they have in the state of nature and agrees to the social contract they gain the security and equality, which the social contract promises.