Part II. Philosophers of law

TEXT 9: Sir Thomas More, 1478—1535

Sir Thomas More was an English statesman and writer, known for his religious stance against King Henry VIII that cost him his life. More was born in London and was educated at one of London's best schools. He later spent two years in the University of Oxford, mastering Latin and undergoing a thorough drilling in formal logic.

Among his important thoughts was that the reasons for crime were to be found in economic and social conditions. He believed that if people lived in a more just and humane society they would behave better. He also thought that punishment should be sensible and that people found guilty should be made to work for the good of the community. His views were far ahead of the time, so that it was only in later centuries that his book Utopia was really understood.

More's Utopia describes a pagan and communist city-state in which the institutions and policies are entirely governed by reason. The order and dignity of such a state provided a notable contrast with the unreasonable policy of Christian Europe, divided by self-interest and greed for power and riches, which More described in Book 1, written in England in 1516. Among the topics discussed by More in Utopia were penology, state-controlled education, religious pluralism, divorce, euthanasia, and women's rights. The resulting demonstration of his learning, invention, and wit established his reputation as one of the foremost Humanists. Soon translated into most European languages, Utopia became the ancestor of a new literary genre, the Utopian romance.

More's History of King Richard III, written in Latin and in English between about 1513 and 1518, is the first masterpiece of English historiography. Though never finished, it influenced succeeding historians. William Shakespeare is indebted to More for his portrait of the tyrant.

More attracted the attention of King Henry VIII. The King made More one of his favourites and often sought his company for philosophical conversations. More became Lord Chancellor in 1529; he was the first layman to hold the post. His fortunes changed, however, when he refused to support Henry's request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

As a strict Roman Catholic he disapproved of Henry VIII's attempt to break away from the church in Rome and set up his own Church of England. For failing to accept Henry as the head of the English church he was tried for treason in 1535 and beheaded at the Tower of London He was made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

TEXT 10: John Locke, 1632—1704

The ideas and writings of the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke deeply influenced the political outlook of the American colonists. Locke spelled out his political ideas in Two Treatises on Civil Government, first published in 1690. His writings were widely read and discussed in both Europe and America. Locke's ideas seemed to fit the American colonial experience. Colonial leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison regarded these ideas as political truth. Locke's ideas became so influential that they have been called the "textbook of the American Revolution."

Locke reasoned that all people were born free, equal, and independent. They possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property at the time they lived in a state of nature, before governments were formed. People contracted among themselves to form governments to protect their natural rights. Locke argued that if a government failed to protect these natural rights, the people could change that government. The people had not agreed to be governed by tyrants who threatened their rights but by rulers who defended their rights.

Locke's ideas were revolutionary in an age when monarchs still claimed they had God-given absolute powers. Locke denied that people were born with an obligation to obey their rulers. Rather, in his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke insisted that freedom of people under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it.

Government, then, was legitimate only as long as people continued to consent to it. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, written nearly a century after Locke, reflected Locke's revolutionary ideas.