19 JUL 2022 · There is more content in this, the final episode of Understanding John Locke. I discuss more of Locke's ideas about tyranny, the rule of law, and the dissolution of government. The discussion of the rule of law is applied to the justification of the Nuremberg Trials, a discussion which shows the conflict between legal positivism and Locke's theory of natural law.

12 JUL 2022 · This episode is a discussion of Locke's definitions of usurpation and tyranny and the circumstances in which they are exercised. Question: was the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol an attempt to usurp the presidency?

5 JUL 2022 · How does John Locke answer the question "When is it justifiable to resist the commands of a sitting ruler or rulers of a civil society?" Locke answers the question by defining four different categories or situations in which resistance of the people is justifiable: Conquest, Usurpation, Tyranny and Dissolution.

28 JUN 2022 · In this episode Professor Houlgate discusses Locke's argument for the necessity of dividing legislative and executive power, giving each type of political power to different persons. He also introduces the concept of federative power and subordinates both it and the executive power to the legislative, the latter of which Locke calls "the supreme power." Finally, Locke draws a distinction between paternal, political and despotical powers, explaining why we should not think of political power as similar to the power of a parent over their children, or like the power of a master over his slaves.

21 JUN 2022 · In this episode Professor Houlgate explains John Locke's discussion of the great variety of governments that can be legitimately formed by the people; for example, democracy, oligarchy and even monarchy, so long as a majority of the people desire this. Second, Locke makes a recommendation about the extent (limits) of legislative power, although he says nothing about the limits of political power enshrined in the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

14 JUN 2022 · The word "ends" in the sub-title means "goals," "objectives," or "purposes." The ends of political society are to repair the defects of the state of nature. Locke identifies and discusses three defects which can only be repaired by those remedies which will lead to political or civil society.

7 JUN 2022 · This episode discusses the hat trick of logic played by John Locke in chapter 7 of Second Treatise. He sets out a deductive argument that purports to prove that a democracy that requires a unanimous vote before any proposal becomes law is a logical impossibility, that is, such a democracy cannot exist. Why? Listen to this episode to find out. In the second part of this episode, we will discuss Locke's distinction between express and tacit consent, and the application of this to one's duty to obey the law.

31 MAY 2022 · Episode 12 is an account of Locke's theory about the origin of political or civil society. He argues that political society is inevitable because the natural right to punish offenders of the law of nature ultimately leads to (what Hobbes calls) "a war of all against all." Locke also argues that absolute monarchy does not qualify as a political society because the relationship Locke describes between the monarch and all others makes political society a logical impossibility.

25 MAY 2022 · In chapter 6 of Understanding John Locke, Professor Houlgate discusses Locke's conception of conjugal society. Locke is careful to tell his readers that conjugal society is not the same as legal marriage because the latter notion implies political or civil society, while the former implies the state of nature. In this section, Locke makes the astonishing recommendation (in the 17th century) that there may come the time when husband and wife separate, after the children leave home. Locke sees no reason why in the state of nature that they should not be able to do this since their coming together in the first place was a voluntary contract.

17 MAY 2022 · Paternal power or "the sort of rule and jurisdiction" that parents have over their children is rarely discussed in books of political philosophy. Locke was one of the first to discuss it mainly because he wanted to draw a later distinction between paternal and political power. But Locke did much more than that. He made specific declarations about what rights parents had and what reciprocal obligations children possessed in the state of nature. In this episode, distinctions will also be made about the more radical views of parent-child relationships proposed by Thomas Hobbes (1640) and much later by Herbert Spencer (1851).