Liberal political thought affirms the moral equality of all persons. The Lockean tradition within liberalism captures this equality by endowing people with equal natural rights. However, a powerful line of criticism holds that the theory fails to live up to its egalitarian billing by treating men and women differently. This article offers a rational reconstruction of the Lockean position on gender equality, and the rights of women in particular. We propose a novel interpretative method which puts Locke into conversation with (...) a contemporary female author, Rachel Speght. In Speght, we find an interesting argument supporting an egalitarian Lockean view, grounded in familiar Lockean assumptions, using familiar Lockean arguments. Voices like Speght have long been unjustly neglected in the liberal tradition. By constructing this imagined conversation, we offer a stronger foundation for Lockean liberalism, and begin to incorporate excluded voices in the formulation of that tradition. (shrink)

A review of John Colman’s recent book Everyone Orthodox to Themselves: John Locke and His American Students on Religion and Liberal Society (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2023).

Locke’s short essay, “Venditio,” offers a series of thought-provoking examples of prices that might or might not be viewed as just. Locke writes as though these examples and his comments about them point to a coherent doctrine about which agreed-to prices are morally acceptable and which are morally unacceptable. However, despite the acuity of some of Locke’s observations, no such coherent doctrine emerges from Locke’s discussions of these examples. Indeed, many of the conclusions Locke reaches as he moves from example (...) to example are implausible in themselves or inconsistent with one another. Nevertheless, not all is lost. Locke’s observations can be viewed as thought experiments on his part which, in conjunction with insights from Locke’s other economic writings, indicate what features a doctrine of acceptable and unacceptable prices needs to possess. I show how a line of argument which appears almost as a sidebar within “Venditio” offers a doctrine that provides those needed features. That doctrine affirms both “the common law of traffic” and “the common law of charity” and a view about when the latter takes priority over the former. (shrink)