Locke, on Theology and Property

Abstract

The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the type of ethics derived from the Lockean system of justice is teleological rather than deontological, as authors like Nozick and Simmons tend to suggest. I argue that the individual cannot be considered as an end in itself, but perhaps as a means to fulfill some other ulterior purpose, namely, to comply with divine will.

The main Locke´s conceptualization on antropologhy derived from Acosta´s works. The form in which Acosta studied Amerindians people and what he maintain about this people was more than important to Locke interest. Thus, is important to the study about Locke and his main thesis on theology and property studied, at least, the main thesis of Acosta on Amerindians.

Locke use Acosta argumentation about the characterization of barbarianism on Amerindians in the passage 102 of the Second Treatise. This is not fortuitous, but answer an important question: “what is the amerindian´s natural situation?”. To answer this, Locke ground his thesis on Acosta´s thoughts and research. Because of that, there is a necessary relation between Locke thoughts, thesis on Amerindians and the Acosta ones. The relation between anthropology and theology in Acosta works ground the lockean system not only about the theology but also the property one. 

In this way, the lockean conquest project grounds, also, on the Acosta´s thesis about America and Amerindians. The person (a main concept in Locke) is the subject who can perform property, and it only could be possible is the subject is not a barbarian. The theology project that God writes in the hearts of the subject necessarily obligates the subject to perform property is he knows, by the culture in which he sustains his own life, the proper ways in which he could perform it. In the Amerindian ways of culture neither does not be possible that their people perform property at all, nor be sovereigns. The Christian ones who lived in Europe does.