Locke's Second Law of Nature

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Locke's Second Law of Nature

[This is the second in a series of posts for philosophy students who are doing their first reading of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government.  The following passages are taken from my book Understanding John Locke: The Smart Student's Guide to Second Treatise of Government.]

Here is the paragraph in which Locke wrote the famous words that many years later deeply influenced the political ideas of George Mason, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and other revolutionary British colonists in America:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: 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 (§6).

The obligations listed by Locke are all negative, that is they tell us what we ought not to do, not what we ought to do.  We ought to refrain from harming others, but at the same time we are not told that we have obligations to help others in achieving a better life, better health, more liberty, or more possessions.

However, in the lengthy sentence that concludes §6 of Second Treatise, Locke writes these words:

Everyone, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.

Locke here tells us that not only that we may not take away or impair the life, liberty, health, limb, and possessions of others, but also that we must protect and provide what “tends to the preservation” of these valuable freedoms for all persons.  This brief passage is not a mere repetition of the first iteration of the law of nature.  Locke repeats the negative duties to not harm another person’s life, liberty, health and possessions, but he also adds a positive duty to do whatever we can to keep others alive, free and healthy.

This is perfectly consistent with Locke's earlier endorsement of Richard Hooker’s claims about equality and the derived natural duties of justice and charity.  Hooker wrote that the equality of men by nature is “evident in itself, and beyond all question.”  Locke comments (in §5) that this equality is “the foundation of the obligation to mutual love among men, on which he [Hooker] builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity”.

If we accept Hooker’s claim that all men are equal, then any duty that I believe is owed to me, is also a duty that I owe to you.  The word “equality” implies equality of moral duties.  If I say, for example, that you have a duty to come to my aid in times of distress, then I imply that everyone else has the same duty under the same circumstances: 

For seeing those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man’s hands as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire?  (Hooker, Eccl. Pol. Lib. 1)

 Locke points out that Hooker later derives “the great maxims of justice and charity” from the  concept of equality.   This ringing endorsement of Hooker gives us a new interpretation of  Locke’s  law of nature.  There are two laws of nature.  The first law tells us that we have a set of negative duties: not to harm one another in our life, liberty, health or possessions.  The second law says that the basic obligations of equality and justice implies that we also have a set of positive duties to do whatever we can to keep others alive, free and healthy.

The “community” to which Locke says we all belong in the state of nature is not just a group of atomic individuals in which each is surrounded by a fence with a sign announcing “Keep Out.”   We are also persons who are bound together by obligations to come to each other’s aid whenever this is needed.  Hence, the correct analogy to use in describing the relationship of persons in the state of nature is not to a group of individuals whose only relationship to one another is that they share the same set of negative rights. It is to a family, a group of friends, villagers, neighbors and other small communities of persons bound together by positive rights and duties.