Lecture 13: Appropriating Locke Today

What this lecture covers

This lecture opens the course's third Enlightenment tradition, social contract theory, using Robert Nozick as the entry point. It connects back to Locke's workmanship ideal, this time applied to political institutions rather than property, and explains why the course tackles Nozick before John Rawls even though Nozick was reacting against Rawls's work.

The lecture addresses two long-standing objections to any social contract theory: that there never was an actual contract, and that appeals to natural law no longer persuade. It shows how modern theorists like Nozick and Rawls replace natural law with Kant's idea of universalizability, and begins Nozick's thought experiment of building up a state from a stateless world through voluntary protective associations, ending on his claim that coercive force is a natural monopoly.

Key ideas

• Political workmanship: just as Locke argued we own what we make materially, he argued we own the political institutions we create, extending maker's knowledge and authority to politics.
• Hypothetical, not historical, contract: modern social contract theorists like Nozick and Rawls do not claim a contract actually happened; they ask what state people like us, as we actually are, would agree to if none existed, to build a normative standard for judging real institutions.
• The "garbage-in" critique of natural man: following Rousseau's critique of Hobbes, any account of a pre-political human nature risks smuggling in assumptions drawn from the theorist's own society.
• Natural law disagreement: historically, natural law vocabulary was used to defend nearly every political position, so its decline is not what caused modern political disagreement, and reviving it would not resolve it.
• Kant's categorical imperative replaces natural law: a categorical imperative (a rule affirmed regardless of consequences) contrasts with a hypothetical imperative (an if/then rule); Kant's example is to treat others always also as ends, never merely as means.
• Nozick's libertarian starting point: there is no social entity with its own good; only individuals exist, so using one person to benefit others uses that person and benefits others, nothing more.
• A benign state of nature makes the argument harder, and stronger: Nozick follows Locke rather than Hobbes in assuming a relatively peaceful state of nature, making it harder to justify a state and therefore more persuasive if he can.
• Coercive force as a natural monopoly: protective associations that compete for the same territory inevitably fight, so force, unlike other goods, functions well only when held by one dominant provider.
• Independents: people who refuse to join the dominant protective association pose both a practical and a normative problem for Nozick's account of political legitimacy.

Walkthrough

From economic to political workmanship (0:01)

The lecture opens by linking the new social contract unit back to Locke's workmanship ideal, now extended from material property to political institutions: just as we own what we make, we can have maker's knowledge and authority over the political arrangements we create. It briefly revisits Locke's debate with other natural law theorists over divine omnipotence, which led him to the voluntarist position underlying his account of individualism.

Two standard objections to social contract theory (7:10)

The lecture lays out two problems any social contract theory must confront. First, following Rousseau's critique of Hobbes, assumptions about a pre-political "natural man" tend to smuggle in features of the theorist's own society. Even the creation of the American Republic, the lecture notes, was not a case of pure agreement from a blank slate, since it involved pre-existing institutions and was partly imposed by force. Modern theorists like Nozick and Rawls sidestep this by treating the social contract as an explicitly hypothetical exercise: what would people like us, as we actually are, agree to if there were no state?

Replacing natural law with Kant (15:25)

The lecture rejects the "comic strip" story that natural law once resolved political disagreement and its decline caused relativism, noting that natural law vocabulary historically supported nearly every political position. It introduces Kant's categorical imperative as the modern replacement, contrasting it with hypothetical (if/then) imperatives, and gives Kant's example: always treat people also as ends in themselves, never merely as means. This grounds Nozick's strongly libertarian starting claim that only individuals exist, so using one person to benefit others simply uses that person.

Building a state from nothing (28:52)

The lecture walks through Nozick's thought experiment: starting from a stateless, relatively benign world (following Locke rather than Hobbes), people find enforcing their own rights individually inefficient and begin forming voluntary protective associations, illustrated with an example of neighbors informally agreeing to watch each other's cars. Over time this develops into competing businesses that sell protection.

Coercive force as a natural monopoly (36:03)

Using examples of rival militias and organized crime, the lecture explains Nozick's claim that coercive force functions well only as a monopoly, since competing protective associations inevitably end up fighting over territory and members. This drives the emergence of one dominant protective association resembling a government. The lecture closes by introducing "independents," people who refuse to recognize this dominant association's legitimacy, as a problem Nozick must address both descriptively and normatively, to be picked up in the next lecture.

Before you watch

• Watch the earlier lectures on Locke's theory of property and the workmanship ideal, since this lecture extends those ideas from economics to politics.
• Recall the course's discussion of Marx's critique of markets and the "garbage-in/garbage-out" problem of unjust starting points, which the lecture says Nozick claims to solve.

Check your understanding

1. How does the lecture distinguish a hypothetical social contract from the kind of actual, historical contract that Hobbes and Locke imagined?
2. What is the "garbage-in/garbage-out" problem with theories of a pre-political natural man, and how do modern social contract theorists try to avoid it?
3. How does Kant's categorical imperative differ from a hypothetical imperative, and why do modern social contract theorists rely on it instead of natural law?
4. Why does Nozick claim that coercive force is a natural monopoly, and what evidence or examples does the lecture use to illustrate this?
5. Who are Nozick's "independents," and why do they create both a practical and a normative problem for his account of the state?