Second Treatise Of Civil Government, I - II

I - Even if the hereditary divine right of kings was initially established by God and imbued into Adam, in the intervening years we have lost complete grasp of how that line of succession should be followed.  Hence, we must answer this question anyway: What does it mean for a figure to have authority over another, in many different contexts.  In the specific case of political authority, it consists in the right to make laws, mete out punishment (up to and including lawful death), defending the population from foreign injury, and all done with an eye to the public good.


II (Of the State of Nature) - First, recognize that we possess freedom within the bounds of the Laws of Nature.  Second, within that Law is each man's direction to self-preservation and thriving.  Third, for the aforementioned reasons, men born into the same community are at the same station in life-- that of subordination to their Maker.  Given all that, every man has the right to execute punishment on another who interferes with or disrupts his own Natural rights. II.6:

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.

Evidence for this: otherwise, by what right can a nation such as ours execute punishment upon a foreigner-- who, having not participated in the legislation of law, is not bound to live under it?

Contraposed to this universal right, there is also the individual right of the aggrieved to extract satisfaction from the wrongdoer or injurer.  Some will say this is going too far, that placing this power within the individual opens the door to exaggeration of injury and improper punishment.  Keep in mind we're discussing justice in the state of Nature-- of course in a mature government it would be good to move this power into formal courts and within the people at large.  But then, how is that an argument for investing supreme power in a single individual monarch?  If we are to design safeguards for the meting out of justice, we'd better do so more carefully than that.

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Looks like the origin of what we call human rights really does depend upon human nature as infused in us by God, our Creator.  And not entirely because every aspect of those rights is individually programmed into every human being-- that would be quite a trick to try to prove, working out the mechanics of God's creation of Man.  Instead, Locke's point can be boiled down to a much simpler argument: it is our subordination under God that puts us all at essentially the same moral level, and it is from that perspective that we have the responsibility to ensure that no one can interfere with at least the basics of another's nature.  It is only if we are not all born into an identical station under God that it would be possible that some are born to a higher station, and can claim for themselves authority and power over the others.  Nietzche's Superman?

Don't forget though, at the moment, we're only talking about Man actually living in an undeveloped state of Nature.  The consequences of all this may change as society is built.