WHAT ARE THE FUNCTIONS AND LIMITS OF POLITICAL POWER / TUTORIALOUTLET WHAT ARE THE FUNCTIONS AND LIMITS OF POLITICAL POW | Page 10

the relationship between Locke's
state of nature and his Christian beliefs. Dunn claimed that Locke's
state of nature is less an exercise in
historical anthropology than a theological reflection on the condition
of man. On Du nn's interpretation,
Locke's state of nature thinking is an expression of his theological
position, that man exists in a world
created by God for God's purposes but that governments are created
by men in order to further those
purposes.
Locke's theory of the state of nature will thus be tied closely to his
theory of natural law, since the latter
defines the rights of persons and their status as free and equal persons.
The stronger the grounds for
accepting Locke's characterization of people as free, equal, and
independent, the more helpful the state of
nature becomes as a device for representing people. Still, it is
important to remember that none of these
interpretations claims that Locke's state of nature is only a thought
experiment, in the way Kant and Rawls
are normally thought to use the concept. Locke did not respond to the
argument “where have there ever
been people in such a state” by saying it did not matter since it was
only a thought experiment. Instead, he argued that there are and have
been people in the state of nature. (Two Treatises 2.14) It seems
important to
him that at least some governments have actually been formed in the
way he suggests. How much it matters
whether they have been or not will be discussed below under the topic
of consent, since the central question
is whether a good government can be legitimate even if it does not
have the actual consent of the people
who live under it; hypothetical contract and actual contract theories
will tend to answer this question
differently.