John Locke argued that individuals possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property that exist before and independent of government. Contemporaries used this same argument to justify dispossessing Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Is this a misreading of Locke?
AYes — Locke intended his natural rights theory to apply universally to all people equally
BNo — Locke's labor theory of property held that land not 'improved' through cultivation had not been legitimately claimed, which contemporaries applied to dismiss Indigenous land use
CYes — Locke was writing only about the English constitutional context, not colonial expansion
DNo — Locke explicitly endorsed colonial dispossession in his philosophical writings
Locke's labor theory of property held that you acquire a right to land by mixing your labor with it — farming, building, improving. If land was not 'improved' in this specific agricultural sense, Locke's framework suggested it remained in a kind of natural commons. Contemporaries applied this to argue that Indigenous peoples who used land differently (hunting, gathering, seasonal rotation) had not established legitimate property claims. This followed from Locke's premises even if he did not spell it out explicitly. The insight is that theories claiming universal scope can simultaneously encode specific cultural assumptions that produce exclusionary outcomes.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
What most fundamentally distinguishes Rousseau's 'general will' from simple majority rule?
AThe general will always favors the lower classes; majority rule can favor the wealthy
BThe general will requires unanimous consent; majority rule requires only 51%
CThe general will is what the community would want if reasoning correctly about the common good, not just the aggregate of individual preferences
DThe general will applies only in small city-states; majority rule works in large nations
Rousseau drew a sharp distinction between the 'will of all' (the sum of what individuals want) and the 'general will' (what the community should want if reasoning about its collective good). Majority rule can produce the will of all — a majority might selfishly burden a minority. But that outcome might violate the general will if the minority's exclusion harms the community's genuine collective interest. This distinction poses the question that haunts democratic theory: can majorities be tyrannical, and if so, what constrains them?
Question 3 True / False
Hobbes's argument for absolute sovereignty was grounded in rational self-interest and voluntary consent, not in divine right — making it technically a form of social contract theory.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the crucial distinction that places Hobbes within the social contract tradition despite his absolutist conclusions. Hobbes did not say the king rules because God ordained it — he said rational individuals in a state of perpetual conflict would voluntarily consent to transfer their freedom to a sovereign capable of enforcing peace. Authority flows upward from individual consent, not downward from divine mandate. Hobbes is a social contract theorist even though his conclusion (absolute, irrevocable sovereignty) seems opposed to liberal tradition. Locke and Rousseau used the same framework to reach opposite conclusions about resistance and revolution.
Question 4 True / False
Social contract theories claimed to describe an actual historical moment when real people agreed to form governments.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
This is the most important clarification about the entire tradition. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were constructing philosophical thought experiments — logical reconstructions of what rational individuals would agree to — not historical narratives. No contract was ever signed. The 'state of nature' was never a real period of history. These were rational justifications for or critiques of existing political arrangements, designed to ask: 'On what basis should we accept political authority?' By framing the answer as rational consent, they shifted the ground of legitimacy from tradition and divine right to reason and agreement.
Question 5 Short Answer
Locke's model of government is often described as a 'trusteeship.' What does that metaphor mean, and what does Locke argue follows logically when the trustee fails?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: In a trusteeship, one party (the trustee) holds something of value on behalf of another (the beneficiary) and is obligated to manage it for the beneficiary's interest. Locke applied this to government: natural rights (life, liberty, property) belong to individuals prior to government. Government is created by consent to protect those rights — it is their trustee, not their source or owner. If government violates the rights it was created to protect, the trust is broken, and Locke's conclusion is direct: the people may remove the trustee. Revolution becomes not only permissible but logically required when government systematically violates natural rights.
This is why Locke's theory was politically explosive: it provided a systematic philosophical justification for revolution as a logical entailment of the theory of legitimate government. You can see this language directly in the Declaration of Independence: 'whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it' — nearly word-for-word Lockean reasoning.