Johan Locke on social contract and civil society

MPSE-003: WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT (From Plato to Marx)

Course Code: MPSE-003

Assignment Code: ASST/MPSE-003//2016-17

Total Marks: 100

(b) Johan Locke on social contract and civil society.

Ans. Social Contract and Civil Society: Locke’s political philosophy found its greatest expression in the Two Treatises of Civil Government, published anonymously during the same year that the Essay appeared under his own name. In the First Treatise Locke offered a point-by-point critique of Robert Filmer’s Patriarchia, a quasi-religious attempt to show that absolute monarchy is the natural system of human social organization. The Second Treatise on Government develops Locke’s own detailed account of the origin, aims, and structure of any civil government.

Adopting a general method similar to that of Hobbes, Locke imagined an original state of nature in which individuals rely upon their own strength, then described our escape from this primitive state by entering into a social contract under which the state provides protective services to its citizens. Unlike Hobbes, Locke regarded this contract as revokable. Any civil government depends on the consent of those who are governed, which may be withdrawn at any time.

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