Politics "The Ideal State"

1. John Locke identifies rights by envisioning an ideal state of nature, a world of abundance where everyone had what they needed in order to live. Within this ideal state of nature, Locke identifies three rights: life, liberty, and property. The right to life is present in the ideal state of nature because the state of nature would not exist if human beings did not have lives. The right to liberty is present because people are born totally free in this state of nature, and no one has dominion over anyone else. Finally, the right to property is found in the ideal state of nature because human beings are entitled to possess the “fruits of their labor” (for example, when a person goes out to pick an apple, the apple is rightfully his). In the ideal state of nature these rights should never conflict, because they are not meant to serve irrational purposes. Although the ideal state of nature assumes that everyone is rational, Locke recognizes that this isn’t the case in real life; irrationality quickly enters the picture (such as when a person uses his labor to hoard all the apples on the tree, taking more than he needs and making it harder for others to survive), and this is what causes conflicts between rights. This is why human beings must enter into civil society: through a system of rational law we are brought closer to the state of nature, a state in which everyone can live in harmony. For Locke, the only rational laws are those that fulfill the three basic rights, because people can easily be irrational, we must give up judgment to the rational government whenever we have a conflict between rights, and it is the role of the government to fairly arbitrate the conflict. However, if the government is not fulfilling its obligation to the people, then the people have the right to revolt and form a new social contract. Of course, this decision is not to be taken lightly, it should only be done when the government is not responsive to change and is not fulfilling...