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UNC-Chapel Hill POLI 271 - Barrett271

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PID#: 730082507 William BarrettLocke and Tacit ConsentFor Locke, the idea of consent is absolutely essential foundation of a legitimate political society (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, part 95). According to Locke, “The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing” (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, p.g. part 95). Yet, this theory of the formation of society is problematic, because not everyone in society necessarily gives verbal, or explicit, consent to the government they live under, which would delegitimize essentially any large modern government. Locke’s solution to this massive loophole was to apply the idea of tacit consent (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, p.g. part 98). However, his theory of tacit consent is an ultimately unsatisfying mechanism for explaining the way individuals join so-ciety, and their obligations towards it, for a variety of reasons.Locke explains his idea of tacit consent in the following passage. “If a man owns or en-joys some part of the land under a given government, while that enjoyment lasts he gives his tacitconsent to the laws of that government and is obliged to obey them” (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, p.g. part 119). Locke believes, “This holds, whether the land is the owned property of himself and his heirs for ever, or he only lodges on it for a week. It holds indeed if heis only traveling freely on the highway; and in effect it holds as long as he is merely in the terri-tories of the government in question” (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, p.g. part 119). His explanation of tacit consent begs an important question however. What if you are born or forced into a society where you don’t agree with the laws of your nation? Locke’s simple answer to this question is that if you don’t like the laws, then go somewhere else (The Second Treatise ofGovernment, Ch. 8, p.g. part 121). In theory, this idea is fine. Everyone would simply move to ~1,360 wordsPID#: 730082507 William Barrettwherever they didn’t feel opposed to the laws of the government. But when applied to the real world, and real societies, we see that this idea is highly impractical.Take for instance, the example a poor farmer who relies on his small farm that he has worked for years for all his sustenance and income. If the government were to pass a law that he was fundamentally opposed to, Locke would likely tell him simply to find a government that he agreed with, or to just set up his own on an uninhabited island (The Second Treatise of Govern-ment, Ch. 8, p.g. part 121). Yet, there are often so many barriers preventing people like him from leaving, that is hard to say that they have a choice to leave at all. In order to leave for just the possibility of a more agreeable government, the farmer and his family would essentially have to give up everything there family has ever owned or known. They’d potentially have to learn a new language, undergo the dangers and discomforts of long distance travel, and abandon their culture, friends, and society. That is of course, if they are even able to afford to travel in the first place. These are not just hypothetical barriers. These are legitimate obstacles that make reloca-tion extremely difficult even in today’s technologically advanced society. This is not even con-sidering the fact that such obstacles would disproportionally affect the poor. A fundamental idea of consent is that a person must be able to revoke their consent. Otherwise, they are being forced into obligations against their will, an idea directly contradictory to the concept of consent. As we can see, one crucial reason Locke’s idea of tacit consent is unsatisfying is that for many people insociety it is not really consent at all. Even if they wanted to leave because they no longer respect the government, many of them simply don’t have the option and are forced to stay by their cir-cumstances. How then, can it really be fair to say that these people consent to the government? Ifthe answer is that they are not actually consenting to the government, then governments every-PID#: 730082507 William Barrettwhere would be delegitimized if they rested solely on Locke’s theory of consent as the founda-tion of political society.Proponents of Locke such as John Dunn respond to this idea by criticizing what he sees as the reading into Locke of the modern idea of consent, rather than what Locke intended by the idea (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). His argument is essentially that while modern theo-ries require consent to be deliberate and voluntary, Locke meant the term in a more ambiguous sense. It would be close enough to consent for Locke for people to simply be not unwilling. Ac-cording to Dunn, all that is needed for proper consent is voluntary acquiescence. Therefore, it does not matter that the people might accept their situation only because their circumstances force them to. They may not like consenting to the government, but the fact that they do not re-sist is enough to qualify as consent in John Dunn’s interpretation of Locke. Thereby legitimizing their governments. The evidence for this interpretation of consent lies in Locke’s explanation of the way we consent to money, but John Simmons objects that this ignores the instances where Locke refers to the need for real consent for certain political obligations. (Stanford Encyclopediaof Philosophy).But here the idea of tacit consent also runs into another objection, more logical in nature. Locke says that a man gives his tacit consent to a government even, “if he is only traveling freelyon the highway; and in effect it holds as long as he is merely in the territories of the government in question” (The Second Treatise of Government, Ch. 8, p.g. part 119). Yet, why, logically speaking, should the simple act of existing in an area mean that you necessarily consent to any-thing? In this theoretically framework, a person could be argued to have up many of their own rights without even being aware that they had done so. The idea that simply not actively resist-ing an authority would mean that you have consented to the laws and obligations of that society,PID#: 730082507 William Barrettand therefore the punishments for breaking those laws, appears to contradict Locke’s own broader theory of consent. Locke specifically states that “Men all being naturally free,


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UNC-Chapel Hill POLI 271 - Barrett271

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