CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 38 of 120

Correct — A, John Locke. Consent is the hinge of Locke's whole argument in the Second Treatise of Government (1689). Men are by nature free, equal and independent, and no one can be taken out of that condition and placed under the political power of another without his own consent; government therefore arises when free individuals agree to leave the state of nature and entrust power to a common authority for the preservation of their lives, liberties and estates. Because the authority is held on trust, it lasts only while the trust is kept — a government that turns against the ends for which it was created forfeits its title, and the people may resume the power they gave. That is why 'government by consent' is Locke's phrase for legitimate rule, and why his argument became the standard justification for limited government and the right of resistance.

• (b)J.S. Mill — Mill's contribution is elsewhere. On Liberty defends the harm principle and freedom of thought and discussion, and Considerations on Representative Government argues for representative institutions with safeguards such as proportional representation — he takes consent for granted rather than founding government on it.
• (c)Jeremy Bentham — Bentham grounded government in utility, not in consent. His test is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and he dismissed talk of natural rights and the original contract as fiction.
• (d)J.J. Rousseau — The strongest distractor, because Rousseau is also a contract theorist. But his central idea is the general will, in which the citizen obeys a law he has helped make rather than consenting to be governed by others — and he explicitly rejected representative government, which is why 'government by consent' is not his formula.

Three social-contract writers give three different answers to the same question. Hobbes has individuals surrender their rights irrevocably to a sovereign in exchange for security, and no right of revolt follows. Locke has them entrust limited power to a government for the protection of life, liberty and property, retaining the right to withdraw the trust. Rousseau has them merge into a collective body whose general will is sovereign, so that obedience to law is obedience to oneself. Locke's version reaches the American Declaration of Independence almost intact, in the claim that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The way to keep the three apart is by what each thinks the contract creates. Hobbes creates a sovereign; Locke creates a trust; Rousseau creates a people. That test disposes of the Rousseau distractor without needing to remember any quotation: Rousseau's citizens are not consenting to be governed by another but constituting themselves as the governing body, and he thought a people that elects representatives is free only on election day. It is worth being straightforward that the exact string 'government by consent' is a textbook summary rather than a sentence Locke wrote in those four words; what is on the page is the argument that political power over a man requires his own consent, and every standard account of Locke turns that into this phrase.

• Locke's Two Treatises of Government was published in 1689, the year after the Glorious Revolution.
• In the Second Treatise, no one may be taken out of the state of natural freedom and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.
• Locke names the ends of government as the preservation of life, liberty and estate, and treats political power as held on trust.
• Because power is held on trust, a government that breaks the trust may be dissolved and the power resumed by the people.
• Rousseau's alternative is the general will of The Social Contract (1762), under which the citizen obeys only laws he has shared in making.

• Picking Rousseau because he is the famous contract theorist; his idea is self-legislation through the general will, not consent to be governed.
• Attaching consent to Hobbes because he too begins from a contract; Hobbes's surrender is once-for-all and leaves no right of resistance.
• Assuming a utilitarian must also be a consent theorist; Bentham grounds authority in utility and calls the contract a fiction.

Asked as a thinker-to-phrase match, so one anchor phrase per name is the efficient preparation — Locke with consent and trust, Rousseau with the general will, Mill with liberty, Bentham with utility.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The idea of the 'general will' as the basis of sovereignty is associated with

  • (a)Thomas Hobbes
  • (b)John Locke
  • (c)J.J. Rousseau
  • (d)Jeremy Bentham

  Answer(c) J.J. Rousseau — set out in The Social Contract (1762), where the sovereign is the people acting as a body and the citizen obeys laws he has helped make.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  According to John Locke, the ends for which men enter into political society and hand power to a government are the preservation of

  • (a)Order and security alone
  • (b)Life, liberty and estate
  • (c)Equality and fraternity
  • (d)The greatest happiness of the greatest number

  Answer(b) Life, liberty and estate — Locke treats government as a trust for these ends, forfeited if the trust is broken.