Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
2-2011
Abstract
John Locke's theory of property has been the subject of sustained contention between two major perspectives: a socioeconomic perspective, which conceives Locke's thought as an expression of the rising bourgeois sensibility and a defense of the nascent capitalist relations, and a theological perspective, which prioritizes his moral worldview grounded in the Christian natural law tradition. This essay argues that a closer analysis of Locke's theory of money in the Second Treatise can provide an alternative to this binary. It maintains that the notion of money comprises a conceptual area of indeterminacy in which the theological universals of the natural law and the historical fact of capital accumulation shade into each other. More specifically, the ambiguity of the status of money enables Locke to navigate an antinomy within the natural law such that he establishes a relation of necessity between the divine telos and accumulative practices.
Keywords
John Locke, property, capitalism, economics, liberalism, money, natural law, theology, morality
Discipline
Political Science
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Review of Politics
Volume
73
Issue
1
First Page
29
Last Page
54
ISSN
0034-6705
Identifier
10.1017/S0034670510000859
Publisher
University of Notre Dame
Citation
INCE, Onur Ulas.(2011). Enclosing in God’s Name, Accumulating for Mankind: Money, Morality, and Accumulation in John Locke’s Theory of Property. Review of Politics, 73(1), 29-54.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1996
Copyright Owner and License
Cambridge University Press
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670510000859