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John Locke
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QUOTE: From these two distinct
rights, the one of punishing the crime for restraint, and preventing the like
offence, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking
reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes it to pass that the
magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into
his hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of the
law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his own authority, but yet
cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has
received. That, he who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own
name, and he alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of
appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of
self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime, to prevent its
being committed again, by the right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing
all reasonable things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every man,
in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others
from doing the like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example
of the punishment that attends it from every body, and also to secure men from
the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and
measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter
he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may
be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom
men can have no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law
of nature, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And Cain
was so fully convinced, that everyone had a right to destroy such a criminal,
that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Every one that findeth me,
shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all mankind. Second Treatise of Government, Ch. II, sec. 11
AUTHOR: John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704), widely known as the
Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one
of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first
of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is
equally important to social contract theory. His work had a great impact upon
the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings
influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well
as the American revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism
and liberal theory are reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of
identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers
such as Hume, Rousseau and Kant. Locke was the first to define the self through
a continuity of consciousness. He postulated that the mind was a blank slate or
tabula rasa. Contrary to pre-existing Cartesian philosophy, he maintained that
we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only
by experience derived from sense perception.
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