Defend Locke Against The Charges Leveled By Rousseau

Name Instructor Course Date Defending Locke from Rousseau Introduction Based on his concept of the law of nature, Locke argues that since people are created free, equal, and independent, they are able to enjoy equal rights. This makes the state of nature an important aspect of representing all people. In order to ensure good governance, people are free to choose the kind of government, they wish for and when it is proven that it does not represent their interests, the government is discarded and a new one is formed. This means that it is not possible for a government to be legitimate if it does not have the real consent from the people it is governing. However, it is not possible for people to agree to discard a government that is good once they have formed it since this is what they are looking for. On the issue of property, Locke argues that it represents a wide range of human aspirations and interests as well as a material good. This makes the property one among the natural rights derived from labor. For Locke, individual ownership of property and goods is justified by the amount of labor a person exerts in producing the goods he owns or in utilizing property to produce goods that benefit human society. This is because without people working, the nature alone provides little societal value. This is an indication that the labor used in creating goods adds value to nature. This led to the creation of the labor theory of property that argues that owning property results from the application of labor. This is the reason for Locke, property comes first before the government implying that the government cannot dispose estates of individuals arbitrarily since they acquired them using their own labor and effort. Defending Locke from Rousseau However, even though Locke is clear in explaining how people start as equals, but some are left out because they do not exert the same effort as others, his political philosophy is criticized by Rousseau. However, this does not mean that Rousseau wins in his argument, since there are numerous factors to defend Locke’s stance. According to Rousseau, Locke’s political philosophy results in degeneration of mankind and eventually in the harmful corruption of humanity. In the First Discourse, Rousseau makes it clear that luxury, which is a concept spurred up by property is a major cause leading to degeneration of humanity and man’s existence as a respectable moral being. This is because the first person to claim ownership of personal property is considered the real founder of the civil society, but also the creator of crimes, horrors, wars, miseries, and murders for mankind. This is the reason this could be avoided if the idea of ownership of personal property was rebuked. Rousseau means that while people struggle and compete to exert more labor and thus produce more goods and property, wars among other evils are realized. This results from greed since people are free to acquire as much wealth and property as they can. It is also from this idea of owning more wealth, which requires more labor that a person would be tempted to misuse others for his own good. For instance, in order to own more property, a person would require more labor. For the exerted labor to be profitable, he has to pay his labo...