In a new book, Yechiel J.M. Leiter offers a "Hebraist" interpretation of the political philosophy of John Locke. This view holds that, despite Locke's nominal affiliation with the Church of England, and thus by inference, with Christianity, the New Testaments play very little role in his thinking. Furthermore (on Leiter's view) classical Greek sources play only a minor role. Leiter says that Locke's views were formed largely from contemplation of the Old Testament.
Leiter is not merely a man of ideas but a man of affairs in Israel. He has served as chief of staff to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Locke has always struck me as a schoolhouse pest, given a role as venerated sage in American secondary school education because of his importance to the founding generation, but not especially intriguing in the way that other great Brits, like Thomas Hobbes or Adam Smith, often are. But perhaps Leiter's argument can induce me to give Locke another look.
Leiter places great importance on Locke's reading of Genesis 1:28, where God bestows upon Adam dominion "over the fish of the sea and fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth on the earth." Filmer, a defender of the divine rights of the absolutist Stuart monarchs, had interpreted this language as making Adam to first in a line of patriarchs, so that he (Filmer) could maintain that the Stuart Kings are the latest in that line, and that we (good Brits and contemporaries of Filmer that we presumably are) owe to the Stuarts the allegiance that Abel gave to Adam. [Abel was neither fish nor fowl but he WAS a 'living thing moving on the earth,' as was disobedient Cain.]
Locke, as Leiter reads him, contends that Adam is addressed here not as the first in a line of patriarchs but simply, and more democratically, as the first in the line of humans. Leiter's Locke regards this notion of dominion as grounding the idea of human equality. We are equal to each other in that we are all superior to, i.e. have dominion over, the fish and fowl etc.
I'll break off the thinking here. It turns out thinking of Locke in connection with Old Testament exegesis does not make him cease to sound like a schoolhouse pest. Well ... I gave it a try.
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