John locke was retarded

no i haven't

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and i never will

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I like Locke.
He did a good job of taking older Puritan formulations of Christian liberty and transmuting them into secular terms. His emphasis on reasoning agents and their consent as the basis of political communities is especially important because we are entering a dark age in which power— not the consent of the governed—will be the foundation of states. Locke is there to remind us that might doesn’t make right.

Locke isn't very secular desu. Most state of nature theorists operated under some kind of natural theology.

He is relatively more secular than what came before him.
Milton makes a strikingly similar argument to the Second Treatise in his “Tenure Of Kings and Magistrates” (1649]—that the people have the right to overthrow a ruler who turns tyrant—but Milton’s justification rests largely on Biblical precedents. There is relatively little Biblical exegesis to justify his arguments in the 2nd Treatise, and when the Bible does crop up, Locke is usually responding to the arguments of others.

>Locke
>secular
lole

I'll dump an effort post I made a few months ago that nobody read to show what I mean.

I have always been bothered with the origins of secularism in liberal political philosophy. I am referring to the State of Nature Arguments of Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza: writers who are generally seen as either progenitors or early advocates of secularism. However, it doesn’t seem to me that any of these writers attempted to separate church and state, but rather transfer the divine right of kings to the divine right of nature—that is, combine church and state through a new method that precludes an appeal to external religious establishments as the state itself is now imbued with religious right. This is because Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza all view Nature (a tendency of almost every enlightenment figure) as the new anchor of authority on which to base normative considerations. However, their understanding of Nature isn’t the materialist conception that we hold today, but something closer to a Great Chain of Being or Fine-Tuning conception. That is, there is a tendency to treat Nature as something that reveals God’s intention of how humans should live, or how society/government should be ordered; there is a Divine plan hidden within the world God made which is revealed by not (only) by scripture, but by another divine attribute: Reason.

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Starting with Hobbes, it is perhaps most obvious that it was his intention to remove the possibility of religious dissent due to his experience with the English Civil War; as he says in Behemoth “the seducers [which caused the rebellion against Charles I] were of divers sorts. One sort were ministers; ministers, as they called themselves, of Christ; and sometimes, in their sermons to the people, God’s ambassadors; pretending to have a right from God to govern everyone his parish and their assembly the whole nation.” To do so, Hobbes intended to subordinate religious authority to the Sovereign, who all religions must necessarily be subordinate to. Now, Hobbes had a strange conception of Human nature. I’m not talking about his thought of people as self-interested and prideful, but rather his view of humans as a kind of automata which functions off predetermined “motions of the mind”. Hobbes in his university days was obsessed with Geometry, and I think that heavily influenced his attempt to create a “science of politics”. This view translates into an almost divine teleology à la Laplace’s billiards, in which human billiards are set off by God and naturally scatter towards a predetermined pattern based on the original vector. One part of this vector is Reason, which, interacting with the world, discovers the “lawes of nature” on which all politics must be based; “reason, which is the law of nature itself, has been given to each and every man directly by God as a Rule for his actions”. These lawes of nature are the foundation legitimate authority, and informs the creation of a social contract which binds individuals together with the sovereign.

This contract must necessarily be of a theological character, as it is the result of God’s billiards forming a certain structure. The contract must be reciprocated, which precludes the possibility of a direct contract with god; “To make contract with god is impossible, but by Mediation of such as God speaketh to, either be Revelation supernaturall, or by his Lieutenants that govern under him, and in his Name: For otherwise we know not whether our Covenant be accepted, or not. And there-fore they that Vow anything contrary to any law of Nature, Vow in vain; as being a thing unjust to pay such Vow. And if it be a thing commanded by the Law of Nature, it is not the Vow, but the Law that binds them”. What this means is that the Sovereign—either a monarch or a parliament—is automatically God’s lieutenants through its act of creation by the social contract, and the ONLY legitimate authority in regards to religious character. This is what I mean by transferring the Divine Right of Kings to the Divine Right of Nature: rather than being imbued the right to rule under God through a religious institution, the Sovereign is granted the right to rule under God by the State of Nature.

Spinoza’s case is a little different, but in many ways reaches the same conclusion as Hobbes’. Two-Thirds of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise deals with a kind of biblical exegesis, and broadly the conclusion he reaches is: We cannot rely on scripture to demonstrate the will of God, but must find it elsewhere. Of course, Spinoza being a famous monist, argues that Nature and God are one-and-the-same. Thus, drawing a normative sovereign right from Nature is predictably theological; “For it is certain that nature, considered wholly in itself, has a sovereign right to do everything that it can do, i.e., the right of nature extends as far as its power extends. For the power of nature is the very power of God who has supreme right to [do] all things.” Spinoza also shares the divine teleology with Hobbes, and makes it explicit in a passage concerning sovereign power over religious laws; “For the civil law derives solely from his own decree, while natural right derives from the laws of nature, and the laws of nature are not accommodated to religion, which is concerned solely with human good, but to the order of universal nature, that is, to the eternal decree of God, which is unknown to us. Others seem to have conceived a rather obscure nation of this, in saying that man can sin against the revealed will of God, but not against his eternal decree by which he predestined all things.” While the eternal decree of God is unknown to us, it is a predestined matter of it coming to pass and our place in it is assured. This again places us in the position of not seeing the separation of Church and State, but its combination into a Divine state.

Last is Locke, possibly the most theological of all the State of Nature authors. Of particular interest is his two treatises on government and his letter concerning toleration. His initial book on government is an attack on Filmer’s Patriachia, which advocates for a divine right of kings based on genealogy from Adam, who was directly charged with a patriarchal duty of all of humanity. So Locke, motivated to construct a legitimation of government which denies inequality and arbitrary power, appeals to Nature. More in the vein of Hobbes than Spinoza, he equates both reason and the law of nature as one and the same; “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it”. Beyond the constant appeals to scripture which accompany practically every point Locke makes, we also get an explicit link of natural-law-as-divine-law in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human understanding; “First, the divine law, whereby that law which God has set to the actions of men—whether promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation.” Now, to escape the state of nature man will initiate a covenant with each other to submit to the power of a sovereign—the social contract. However, Locke makes quite an interesting statement within the Letter Concerning Toleration in regards to contracts and covenants; “Lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissovles all”. This is quite a radical statement considering the tone of the rest of the work, and I think it highlights the importance that theology plays in Locke’s political philosophy: That nature, reason, and contract—all the foundations of the state—are found in God and only in God. Again, the state is imbued with a divine underpinning through it being derived from Nature

All of this brings into question whether these writers can be seen as secular. If we consider secularism as the separation of mere the institutions of church and state then I they could be seen as such in a way. However, in no way do any of these authors attempt to derive a foundation of government that is not in itself religious in character. There is no separation of religion and government in any true sense: there is merely a transfer of divinity from Kings to Commonwealth by the vector of Nature, which pacifies the power of formal religious institutions by making the construction of government a divine act itself. I think it is only because we in contemporary society consider Nature in a materialist fashion that we think these writers were secular and their arguments agnostic of religious character. These systems are based rather on a natural theology than a truly secular foundation. So, referring to these authors as the founders or progenitors of secularism seems absurd to me

That's it, thoughts?

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>“I am the punishment of God...If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.

By all means. Go ahead.
Like I said, I am not saying that Locke was absolutely secular as we would understand the terms. After all, the 1st Treatise is the kind of text that was common during the political disputes of the English Revolutionary era: Biblical exegesis to justify how political communities should be arranged. For instance, Milton’s justification for divorce is primarily based on his citation of Biblical precedent, as was his justification for regicide. But in the 2nd Treatise, Locke assigns natural Reason a place alongside revelation, as the modality through which the Laws of Nature can be understood. This is what was influential to those who came after Locke, which is why arguments from the 2nd Treatise still influence contemporary political discourse in a way that Locke’s 1st Treatise or Milton’s “Tenure...” don’t.

Berkeley was better than Locke AND Hume, suck my dick

>I'm unable to conjure a reasonable counterargument so I'll simply use the word "retard"
The absolute state of Yea Forums

Right.
As far as 17th century thought goes, I am much more familiar with Milton than Locke, but the argument that nature, reason and contract are ultimately underwritten by God is very 17th century. And you do a solid job of arguing this.
My only point was that the very substantial contribution of 17th century theorists of Christian liberty, thinkers like Milton and then Locke who broke new ground that subsequent thinkers would expand upon as theorists of the 18th century would supplanted popular sovereignty for God as the foundation of a polity—this crucial contribution is being suffocated and strangled and erased from the historical consciousness. Really, Western history has, as a rule, been almost uniformly antidemocratic. 17th century theories of Christian liberty, which influenced 18th century theories of popular sovereignty were historical anomalies that may be on the verge of running out of gas. That would be a damn shame.

Classical refers to Greece and Rome that nigga an enlightenment philosopher you retard

he is part of the philosophical canon, which is sometimes referred to as "the classics, due to their influence. you are rude and a cunt.

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>I don't care what Locke says

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That distinction goes to Hobbes.

I don't think they will disappear anytime soon.

The future looks grim, fren. therealnews.com/series/reality-asserts-itself-thomas-drake
m.youtube.com/watch?v=EcWsHUDYzlA

He didn't say the best classical philosopher

bump

Hobbes is based