John Locke (1632–1704) is one of the most important English philosophers. His thoughts on moral philosophy take a bit from several disciplines, including political science, biology, wider philosophy, and education. Like the many other great minds who helped define the Enlightenment, John Locke advocated a scientific approach and dedication to reason in all inquiries, even ethics, which spanned both the individual and political realms.
The Enlightenment (1685–1815) got underway in Western Europe right around the time of a major political development in Locke’s home country of England, one that would inspire a lot of his writings and philosophical ideas. In a 1688 event called the Glorious Revolution, King James II of England was overthrown by a coalition from Parliament, which installed in his place William of Orange, a Dutch royal. Although still a sovereign ruler, William supported the Bill of Rights of 1689, which forever ended the absolute power of the British monarchy in favor of oversight in political decisions from Parliament. This laid the groundwork for the development of formal democracies, as well as the informal notion of giving power to “regular” people, or at least people other than monarchs.
Locke wrote extensively on the idea of a more open form of government. But in the absence of an absolute monarch, there threatened to be a power vacuum or exploitable chaos in which rulers could very well make a grab at power, monarch-style. Something had to be done, and Locke explored the idea of a “social contract.” Because there is a lack of a sovereign as the be-all and end-all, then any democratic society, Locke theorized, must have some kind of agreement between the government and the governed. The government is established to maintain agreements and maintain a just society via a system of laws, but underlying that is a social contract, which is an informal agreement or framework that helps determine what is right and wrong within a society. This is then the model by which a culture or society sets its ethical standards and the norms for which positive and negative behavior are recognized and defined on both the individual and political levels. Because it is built on mutual trust and responsibility, a social contract is only as good as those who uphold their part of the agreement. That means a government must rule justly and the people must do their part to uphold the society’s values.
“[A]ll mankind…being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” —John Locke
Locke considered there to be a slight wedge between the leaders and the people they lead; Locke calls the populace or the electorate the “civil society.” Locke held that an ethical leader—be it a king, president, prime minister, and so on—got his right and approval to lead on loan. A leader was not absolute. This means that if a government official in a position of power does not behave according to the prevailing ethical standards (or, say, acts obscenely in his own interests instead of that of the people), a civil society can, should, and will take that power back and replace that person with somebody who does uphold those standards. This system stands in the US, for example; a presidential election is held every four years. It serves as a referendum on the performance and representative abilities of the incumbent president (or if the president’s constitutionally limited two terms are up, on the president’s political party).
In 1684 a friend asked Locke—a good person to ask—for his advice on how to properly educate children. Locke thought about it for a long time, and in 1693 published Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In the treatise, he carefully lays out links between what he thinks is proper education early in childhood and lasting happiness in adulthood. Foremost, Locke says that happiness requires a healthy body as well as a healthy mind. It’s important, then, to instill good healthy habits in kids. In fact, it is a healthy body that allows for the healthiest of thought and readiness for education; the body must be able to do the brain’s work. To Locke, physical health was as much of an ethical virtue as intellectual curiosity.
Next, he says that children have to be taught early on how to go after the right things that will bring them happiness. It’s important to Locke that this training start early, because children (as well as adults) can be distracted by the world’s many attractive frivolities. This is but a first step on Locke’s most ethical, virtue-building, happiness-seeking path in which an individual must “deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite lean the other way.” This suggests that Locke thought pleasure seeking was natural, but that some of it must be ignored. He divided these lures into “natural wants” and “wants of fancy.” Natural wants are just that—natural. They’re the ones that we’re going to go after and it’s perfectly fine, ones that are or seem to be biological. The wants of fancy, though, are false, hollow, man-made desires. It’s ethically imperative, Locke writes, for parents and teachers to show children the difference between the two.