The Individual, Government And Society

Every philosopher, from Plato to Hegel, has to make out the true meanings of individual, government and society. Of course, Locke is one of them. And this paper pays much attention to these three aspects of Locke's thought of political philosophy.In detail, the main idea of Locke's political philosophy is embodied by these conceptions:finiteness, self-denial, separated power and toleration, through which finiteness runs. At the same time, the author of this paper thinks it's reasonable to accept the idea like that: The desire of human beings should be matched with the ability of his own. Then, this paper will take Locke's epistemology, or new idealism as the first part and point out the finiteness of reason,on which, to some extent, opinion and thought of Locke's political philosophy is based. Then, the idea of finiteness represents self-denial that this paper will go to discuss. Man exists with virtue. So we can not talk about morality in an unattached scope, and we should know that moral philosophy is not only a speculative scope, but has a close relationship with practice. Ultimately cultivating and achieving of virtue, including nobleness of virtue, freedom of thought, and independence of personality, however, depends on dealing with the relation of self-denial and desire felicitously, and on getting into a good habit. Naturally, because of the relation of antinomy between desire and ability, it will be talked about in the following details—if the desire of human beings can not match with their capability, even renegade the scope of self-denial for a little time, it would impossible for them to enjoy happiness, which is thepurpose of human beings all the time.Besides the these parts, accordingly, this paper will talk about separated power of government, which is also a main part of Locke's political philosophy. Apparently, human beings enter into modern civil society from the state of nature of their own accord, undoubtedly, they expect that their freedom of soul, security of body and property be safeguarded and maintained as before. In other words, the power of government must not have a negative impact upon the property of citizen for this purpose. The government power has to be controlled. Furthermore, what follows is the thought of the toleration. The idea that peopleshould be tolerated in religion field will give human beings more freedom and right, but not restriction. For a long period, since there is no clear boundary between religion belief and secular politics, it's difficult for both of them to make out their own power district up hill and dale, it's easy for them to invade each other and trample their dignity of each other. If religion and politics converge, thought would throw away vigor forever, it would be impossible for the individual to get the freedom of thought in any way. Avoiding danger or harm, as Locke said, it's necessary to for human beings to ponder the question of boundary. In other words, there should be a clear boundary between religion and politics, reason and belief. After the boundary, religion force and government power should be controlled stiil willingly by the spirit of toleration and can not arrogate each Other. As for the religion force, it should care more about the human beings' freedom of will and salvation of soul, but not transcend the temporal world. And we haveto make toleration and acceptance as a precondition of the freedom, including freedom of religion, belief and politics. This paper will take it as the main thread and clue, and it will be discussed in chapter 2, 3, 4, and 5 carefully.If this idea of mine is to the point for this treatise, it is not redundant to study freedom. Those parts mentioned above may be come down to the question of freedom, as the palm and the back of hand, which will be talked in chapter 6, i.e. the last one. Just as other scholars' point of view, Locke is one of the modern liberalists who lay a foundation for the liberalism. But he is a modern liberalist in what extent still needs some qualification. In my opinion, Locke's thought belongs to liberalism, if I can be permitted to make use of this term, but a restricted or finite liberalism, or speaking more definitely, a conservative liberalism. To this extent, the thought of finiteness is embodied again.Now, please give me a permission to talk it in the several following chapters with those key words: finiteness, self-denial, separated power and toleration. These terms present themselves frequently so that they make up of the central character by which I would portray the primary skeleton of my paper.