 |
|
John Locke
|
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment