‘Locke is an individualist out and out.’ Substantiate this statement. (2012)
“Out and out” means consistently, from premises to conclusions. That is what sets John Locke apart from Thomas Hobbes, who began from individuals and ended in an absolute sovereign. Locke’s individual is the source, measure and limit of political authority throughout; his individualism, however, is theistic and law-bound, not atomistic.
Individualist Premises
- The unit of analysis. The Second Treatise of Government (1689) begins from men in a state of perfect freedom and equality (§4). Society and government are built from, and justified to, these individuals.
- The knowing individual. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) rejects innate ideas: each mind begins as white paper and builds knowledge from its own experience. Inherited authority loses its claim, and judgement becomes each person’s task.
- Self-ownership. Every man has a property in his own person (§27); labour turns common things into private property before any government exists.
- Natural rights. Life, liberty and estate precede the state; the community secures rather than confers them.
Individualist Conclusions
- Consent. No one can be subjected to political power without his own consent (§95).
- Government as trust. The legislative holds a fiduciary power bounded by the individual’s rights, and it cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent (§138).
- Resistance. When rulers breach the trust, the people shall be judge (§240) and may resist.
- Conscience. A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) holds that the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate; the church is a voluntary society.
- No absolute sovereign. Locke avoids the language of sovereignty altogether, leaving the community a supreme power over its trustees (§149). Hobbes’s conclusions betray his premises; Locke’s do not.
Qualifications
- Majority rule. Entering society, each submits to the determination of the majority (§97). Willmoore Kendall (John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule, 1941) read this as majoritarian collectivism.
- God’s workmanship. Men are God’s property, whose workmanship they are (§6); none may destroy himself or sell himself into slavery. Each must, when his own preservation is not at stake, preserve the rest of mankind. John Dunn (The Political Thought of John Locke, 1969) places this individualism inside a Calvinist frame of duty.
- Uneven individuals. C. B. Macpherson (1962) calls it possessive individualism: full individuality belongs to owners. Carole Pateman (The Sexual Contract, 1988) notes that wives remain under conjugal power.
- Limited toleration. Atheists and Catholics owing allegiance to a foreign prince were excluded.
- Prerogative. The executive may act for the public good without, and even against, law (§160).
- Communitarian critique. Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor object that selves are formed by community, so pre-social rights-bearers are an abstraction.
The Indian Illustration
Part III of the Constitution is Lockean: rights held against the state, protected by courts. K. S. Puttaswamy (2017) grounded privacy in individual dignity and autonomy, self-ownership in a modern register. Yet the Constitution also protects groups (Articles 29–30) and directs social justice (Part IV), and Bhikhu Parekh (Rethinking Multiculturalism, 2000) has argued that liberal individualism underrates communities that shape identity: Locke’s individualism, tempered.
Conclusion
The statement stands: Locke is individualist in method, premises and conclusions, and unlike Hobbes never trades liberty for security. But his individual is a creature of God, bound by natural law, the majority and duties to others. “Out and out” is right about consistency; wrong if it implies atomism or egoism.