The most influential early expositors of
systematic liberal theory were John Locke
and John Stuart Mill. Locke ([1690] 1960)
viewed individuals as endowed with and
animated by reason, characterized as the
‘Voice of God,’ through which they can discern
and act upon the dictates of divinely
given natural law. From birth, all are equally
endowed with this reason, which is the basis
for their decisions to leave the state of
nature, to enter into civil and political
society, and to act in the community. Individuals
may and often do act irrationally – that
is, they debase their natural faculties and
misapprehend what natural law requires –
but Locke seems to suppose that most
people most of the time will exercise their
reason, making a just law and government
possible. Indeed, natural law and the reason
to apprehend it incline individuals to consider
not only their own interests but those
of others and thus to value social cooperation
and self-restraint. In this way, they exhibit a
kind of natural political virtue not altogether
derivable from simple self-interest. Freedom
under government, to Locke, is not
simply the absence of external restraint but
also living in conformity with a predictable,
non-arbitrary law to which one has directly
or indirectly consented. It is ‘to have a
standing Rule to live by, common to every
one of the Society, and made by the Legislative
Power erected in it …’ (Locke,
[1690] 1960: 324).
expositors