Locke's Natural Law is the Law of Reason and the Law of God. God is an axiom in the doctrine of Locke's natural law. When Locke tried to demonstrate the existence of God with the faculties of reason which man was endowed with by Him, he made an error ...
Locke's Natural Law is the Law of Reason and the Law of God. God is an axiom in the doctrine of Locke's natural law. When Locke tried to demonstrate the existence of God with the faculties of reason which man was endowed with by Him, he made an error of tautology. But his true intention was to argue that the idea of God is not "innate", but perceived and reflected on by ourselves from experience by the use of our reason faculties.
It is said that the refutation of innate ideas constitutes a refutation of natural law as well. It must be noted that Locke himself did not think that his criticism of innate ideas was in any way inconsistent with a belief in natural law. It rather lays the epidemiological foundations for the establishment of ethics and political philosophy, and so means by the refutation of tory ideologist Sir Robert Filmer's tract 「Patriarcha」whose essential philosophy is based on the nativeform of the doctrine of innate knowledge.
Locke's natural law rules were not new, but common ones in the contemporary English academic scholars and preachers. What he had done was to organize them and made practical application of them for the political philosophy. Moreover he derived the legitimate political power from the natural law and in turn criticized the tory regime in view of the natural law rules.
Locke's following arguments indicate even nowadays the natural law rules are a mirror of law-makers and political leaders. he says,
「The obligations of the law of Nature, cease not in Society but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have humane laws known penalties annexed to them, to enforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, Legislators as well as others. The Rules that they make for other Men Actions, must, as well as their own and other Men Actions, be conformable to the Law of Nature, i. e. to the will of God, of which that is a Declaration, and the fundamental Law of Nature being the preservation of Mankind, no Humane Sanction can be good, or valid against it.