Tag: Locke

John Locke and the Native Americans Early English Liberalism and Its Colonial Reality


Free Download Nagamitsu Miura, "John Locke and the Native Americans: Early English Liberalism and Its Colonial Reality"
English | 2013 | ISBN: 1443849766 | PDF | pages: 190 | 0.9 mb
Since the 1990s, the relation between liberalism and colonialism has been one of the most important issues in Locke studies and also in the field of modern political thought. This present work is a unique contribution to discussion of this issue in that it elucidates Locke’s concept of the law of nature and his view of war. Locke’s law of nature includes, despite its ostensible universal validity, some particular rules which favour the rights of a European form of political society and individualistic land-acquisition at the sacrifice of native traditional land-rights and subsistence. Concerning wars between settlers and the natives, Locke’s concept of "punishment" in state of nature allows the militarily superior side to make a war with the inferior in disregard for the latter’s claim and nevertheless, after winning victory, proclaim its own just cause of war. By putting Locke’s discourse on colonization and war in the context of contemporary relations between English colonists and the natives, this book makes clear that the expansive element of his theory of property actually overbalanced his rule of limitation of property according to equitableness and that it, after all, undermines the general principles of freedom and equality of all in his law of nature.

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Locke on Essence and Identity


Free Download Locke on Essence and Identity By Christopher Hughes Conn (auth.)
2003 | 212 Pages | ISBN: 9401037655 | PDF | 6 MB
I first became interested in the relationship between Locke’s anti essentialism and his theory of identity in a first-year graduate course on metaphysics taught at Syracuse University by Jose Benardete. I had until then approached Locke as a "safe", commonsense philosopher, whose metaphysical agenda-constrained as it was by his concept empiricism was largely geared towards upholding a scientifically enlightened, broadly Christian worldview. I am greatly indebted to Professor Benardete for disabusing me of this understanding of Locke’s work. Benardete’s Locke was not the Locke that I had been exposed to as an undergraduate, not the Locke that I had found in Copleston’s History of Philosophy. Rather, he was a profoundly creative and audacious metaphysician, who was justly perceived to be a tremendously dangerous philosopher by his more traditional contemporarie s. And as much I had admired Copleston’s Locke, I have become positively enthralled with Benardete’s. The topics of identity and essentialism have become mainstays of contemporary metaphysics, and it is no understatement to say that Locke’s contribution to modem debates on these matters is enormous. My early interest in Locke’s work on essentialism and identity-through-time was motivated by two factors. First, although there are a number of obvious and significant conceptual connections between these topics, Locke’s own theorizing about identity seems not to have been informed by his critique of essentialism or vice versa.

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