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John Locke and the Fable of Liberalism This is a repository copy of John Locke and the fable of liberalism. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/121796/ Version: Accepted Version Article: Stanton, Tim orcid.org/0000-0002-8282-9570 (2018) John Locke and the fable of liberalism. Historical Journal. pp. 597-622. ISSN 0018-246X https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X17000450 Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ The Historical Journal JOHN LOCKE AND THE FABLE OF LIBERALISM Journal: The Historical Journal Manuscript ID HJ-2017-062.R1 Manuscript Type: Article Perio : 1600-99, 1700-99, 1800-99, 1900-99, 2000- Intellectual, Historiographical, Religious, Political, A ministrative ( Legal, Thematic: Social Geographic: ,urope, Continental, .ritain, America, North Cambridge University Press Page 1 of 46 The Historical Journal Locke and the fable of liberalism JOHN LOCKE AND THE FABLE OF LIBERALISM TIMOTHY STANTON University of York ABSTRACT. This essay explores the ways in which John Locke was claimed by liberalism and refashioned in its image. It was Locke‘s fate to become the hero of what I term the fable of liberalism‘, the story liberalism recounts to itself about its origins and purposes. Locke is a pivotal figure–perhaps the pivotal figure–in this story, because he put into currency conceptions which contributed centrally to the emergence and spread of liberal ways of thinking about politics which continue to ramify. It was Locke who established that the legitimacy of a political authority was a necessary condition of obedience to it and that its legitimacy was a product of the consensual route by which it came into existence$ it was Locke who established that the route by which it came into existence determined the ends for which it existed and, with these, the scope of its authority. All this was explained in an exemplary way by Locke (the story goes), and he remains the great exemplar for understanding and conducting politics legitimately even today. This essay puts (uestion marks beside the Locke who emerges from this story. It substitutes a new and very different Locke in his place. 1 Cambridge University Press The Historical Journal Page 2 of 46 Locke and the fable of liberalism JOHN LOCKE AND THE FABLE OF LIBERALISM* TIMOTHY STANTON University of York I ”[A]ll communities tell stories about themselves, about the istinctive nature of their formation an achievements. These stories can have a powerful role in constituting our i entities, an so in efining an sustaining our common life&.1 These wor s are 'uentin S(inner&s, an I ta(e them as my point of eparture in this essay. A well-tol story has the ability to transform the way we un erstan ourselves an the worl in which we live, shaping it into significance after its own fashion an interpreting it to us authoritatively. We ta(e our bearings from it. It e,plains, for goo or ill, how we came to live an thin( as we o. Typically this means buil ing upon a conventional repertoire of stories with which a particular age, a particular civili-ation, a particular community, is alrea y conversant. .ut as S(inner notes, this suggests a ifficulty, because these stories are ”sub/ect to en less manipulation... [ I]t will always be in the interests of the powerful 0 rulers an opinion- formers ali(e 0 that certain stories shoul be remembere , an in certain ways, an that other stories shoul be forgotten. That being so [S(inner continues] it is part of the moral importance of historical stu y that historians shoul be rea y to engage with these stories an ta(e a critical stance towar s them. The role, you might say, is that of bearing witness, ensuring that the stories which efine an sustain us are as little as possible impose upon us in such a way that particular groups or i eals are mislea ingly praise , or mislea ingly blame , or un/ustly omitte from the recor altogether&.2 This essay is inten e in that spirit. 2 Cambridge University Press Page 3 of 46 The Historical Journal Locke and the fable of liberalism II 2iberalism, li(e many other ”isms&, implies a story to vali ate it an to ratify its values, a story which shows that the past was con ucte into the present accor ing to its tune. The story may, of course, be tol in various ways,1 but I will be concerne in this essay with the strange an remar(able convergence between the story tol by mo ern liberals an a story tol by people of a very ifferent hue in the seventeenth an eighteenth centuries. The result of that convergence is an unsustainable but always wi ely accepte version of the past 0 wi ely accepte because, for ifferent reasons, it suits liberals an their enemies ali(e. The story tells of the birth of liberalism somewhere in Englan in the seventeenth century. 4epen ing upon who tells the story, the father was either Thomas Hobbes5 or 6ohn 2oc(e.7 8eports iffer. There are even ar( mutterings that, in fact, they are one an the same person.9 Either way, the offspring lai the intellectual foun ations for a new way of un erstan ing the worl , an one which continues to shape our collective political imagination. With the a vent of liberalism, so the story goes, human beings became mo ern men an women, recognisable as such by their e:ual capacity to choose for themselves how they ought to live, an by their matching opposition to the imposition by authority 0 whether civil or ecclesiastical 0 of forms of life an mo es of thought that they have not chosen. Thus religion, for one, retire , or was pushe , into private life, an a new epoch of liberal self- government began. This is the story I have calle in the title of this essay ”the fable of liberalism&.7 My concern here is with the roles playe by 6ohn 2oc(e in that story, rather than with the rival stories, groups an i eals over which it may have trample in the course of its triumphal march.8 In writing of the ”fable of liberalism& I o not mean to isparage liberalism or to suggest that it is simply a tric( of the light. 8ather, I mean to convey that what I have in view is not :uite, or not /ust, the i eology, or history, or histories, or genealogies, of liberalism, but 1 Cambridge University Press The Historical Journal Page 4 of 46 Locke and the fable of liberalism the conventional stories to which it implicitly appeals, its persuasive ambitions, an its artfulness. I shall be spea(ing, that is to say, about fabulae: about great men an great ee s, an what is tol of them, about what is inevitable, about what is the sub/ect of common tal( an i le tal(, about what is fabricate or false.9 The ne,t section of the essay iscusses the conventional stories upon which the fable of liberalism buil s. The fourth section iscusses the emergence of the fable itself. The fifth section raws attention to an historical irony in the way that 2oc(e figures in many versions of that fable to ay. The si,th section of the essay suggests a ifferent way of thin(ing about 2oc(e, an one which puts :uestion mar(s against most mo ern treatments of 2oc(e an most versions of the fable of liberalism in which he figures centrally. I turn first, then, to the stories upon which that fable raws. III The fable of liberalism is a successor story to at least two ol er stories, which for present purposes may be istinguishe , rather roughly an rea ily, as, respectively, the ”in ivi ualism& story an the ” emocratic intellect& story. .oth stories begin, in their most primitive forms, in the seventeenth century, as reflections, or ruminations, on the thought an e,perience of the previous two centuries, an both attempt to ma(e sense of the worl in which people now fin themselves. .oth were evelope more fully over the eighteenth an nineteenth centuries, the first by Hegel, an then Mar, an his followers,10 the secon by Hume, Smith, an Constant among others, reaching an apotheosis in Toc:ueville.11 .y the twentieth century, they were firmly entrenche among the repertoire of stories efining recogni-able, an perhaps acceptable, accounts of the transition from the me ieval or early- mo ern to the mo ern worl . 5 Cambridge University Press Page 5 of 46 The Historical Journal Locke and the fable of liberalism .oth tell of two istinct epochs, one lost forever or remorselessly rece ing from view, the secon efinitive of the present an the future. Here is the in ivi ualism story in outline.
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