He tells us that humans were not made “for one another’s uses,” because we are the “property” of God’s holy and transcendental use. We are, as both Kant and God Himself would say, “ ends in ourselves.” Furthermore, Locke links this directly to the evil that is slavery. Thus, precisely because we are God’s “property,” we transcend physical property. Now one can see where I got the idea to write in my speech that “Life is owned by Nature herself, and can be ended by no mortal, not even the one to whom Nature has loaned it.”Humans, made in the image of God in Locke’s eyes, are a piece of His “ workmanship,” that is to say that they have transcendental worth. Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, 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 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. And, being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours. 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 for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another’s pleasure. Locke says it right out: “He has not liberty to destroy himself.” What could be a more open condemnation of suicide? Furthermore, Locke himself makes the connection between slavery, suicide and murder: “Me” is that assurance that “me” is neither murdered nor enslaved, (and shall remain so into perpetuity), ergo any “commonwealth” that presupposes to be able to own “me,” does not understand the very nature of “me.” What I have called caprice, Locke calls “licence.” To put one’s individual choice of the moment, to put that irrational passion and lust for getting what one wants rights now, to put that above true choosality and true Lockean liberty, that is licence. No one can have a right to Life, but rather, his or her rights come from Life. John Locke has just shown us the point (Life) from which the very notion of right starts. The first philosophe, the very father of the Age of Enlightenment and the great attorney for the defense of the people of England in their cause of 1688, John Locke himself, condemned the ridiculous theory of legal euthanasia in language as blatant as that of the Swiss gentleman who would follow him:īut though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself. It will be thought that while Rousseau may have been this explicitly against suicide because it was the very essence of slavery, no other philosophe so blatantly attacked suicide as slavery, correct? No, that is not correct. The opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of Ohio University or the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics.īradford Short - Carnegie-Mellon UniversityĪfter speaking of metaphysics and the right-state of life-liberty as viewed by Rousseau, the Socrates of Geneva, I move on to John Locke, the Socrates of London. Presented at the 1999 Ohio University Student Conference on Applied Ethics.
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