Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Before Locke?

Nearly a century before John Locke articulated the principles which have become associated with his name, and which have made possible modern civilization, a Spanish scholastic named Juan de Mariana seems to have anticipated Locke and given relatively precise expression of those same principles.

The view that the legitimacy of a government is based on the consent of the governed is a view now associated with Locke. Yet, as historian Jesús Huerta de Soto notes, this Spanish scholastic, enjoying the freedom of thought which Spain experienced after the occupying Muslim armies were repelled from the area in 1492, expresses Lockean ideas at a time long prior to Locke:

Although Father Mariana wrote many books, the first one with a libertarian content was De rege et regis institutione (On the king and the royal institution), published in 1598, in which he set forth his famous defense of tyrannicide. According to Mariana, any individual citizen can justly assassinate a king who imposes taxes without the consent of the people, seizes the property of individuals and squanders it, or prevents a meeting of a democratic parliament. The doctrines contained in this book were apparently used to justify the assassination of the French tyrant kings Henry III and Henry IV, and the book was burned in Paris by the executioner as a result of a decree issued by the Parliament of Paris on July 4, 1610.

The logic of Juan de Mariana clearly antedates and foreshadows Locke, who in turn influenced the Declaration of Independence. Could it be that the “Spirit of ‘76” owes as much, or more, to a Spanish late scholastic than to an middle-class English political philosopher?