Locke's Two Treatises of Government › The State of Nature: Where Political Philosophy Begins

::: {.callout-note title="State of Nature"} A theoretical condition in which human beings exist without government or political authority. For Locke, this is not a state of chaos but a condition governed by natural law, in which individuals possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property. ::: Locke's positive theory begins with a thought experiment: imagine human beings living without any government at all. What would this "state of nature" be like? What rights would people have? What problems would arise? This is not a historical claim about how humans actually lived long ago. It is a thought experiment designed to separate what is natural from what is conventional, what belongs to us simply as human beings from what we acquire through political arrangements. Understanding the state of nature helps us see what government is for and what limits should constrain it. Locke's state of nature is emphatically not the war of all against all that Hobbes described. It is a condition of freedom and equality, governed by natural law. Human beings in this state have no political superiors. No one is born the subject of another. But this freedom is not license to do whatever one pleases. > The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. The law of nature, which we can discover through reason, establishes that all human beings have fundamental rights that others must respect. These rights do not come from government. They exist before government and provide the standard by which government must be judged.