To Begin With, Locke Believes

To begin with, Locke believes that a person is only free to act upon his or her own property, he introduced the importance of private property for liberty, however, this shifted due to a religious conflict. In Locke’s point of view, toleration means that every individual has a virtue or duty. He believed that the state shouldn’t have the power or authority to know what you are thinking of. According to Locke, “the enlightenment requires nothing but freedom— and the most innocent of all that may be called ‘freedom’: freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matter” (Lock on letter concerning toleration)- by this he is saying that everyone has the access to knowledge; everyone has the freedom to exercise his ability to participate in independent thinking and reason. Locke also believes that people should have the freedom to criticize those reasons to advance the state or government change; people should be permitted to publicly give criticism about any imposed order.

Locke mentions on his “Second Treason of Government” that a person has the right to his own property, and that if labor is added on it that the person has the freedom to own that property (he mentions this in his paper- S31). That also when you add labor into something, that something you added labor to, is a part of you, if you put more work to gain things then you deserve more than what you are working for. Thus, you adding labor to your property gives that something/property more value. “He hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”- (Locke S27). A person is also able to exchange his or her property for money or survival. Therefore, liberty was considered as the owning and free trading of private property from one person to another.

A, however, would be Nozick’s example of a tomato can, “if I own a can of tomato juice and spilled it I the sea, so that its molecules (radioactive so I can check this) mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated the tomato juice?” (page 10, 175). He uses this example to say that he- throwing the tomato can, has put effort using his hand to throw the tomato can into the sea, this does not mean the sea belongs to him because he simply threw his tomato can into it. It just means that he wasted his tomato juice by throwing it into the sea.

another example- that Locke states that the earth is considered as property that is used for “human survival”. However, if the earth belongs to us all as property, why do we own individual properties in it?

Kant introduced "The Enlightenment"; that lead to a revolution in science and philosophy, it caused separations between churches and the state. This began when the public started to publicly criticize the church, that is when the society started to change. The state in the past governed the people by one religion and had full empowerment over the regulations as well. However, that way any other unwelcoming views or beliefs are treated unfairly by the government. Overall, Kant emphasized how important freedom of knowledge is for the state to improve and develop. Which was true as the critique of the church guided the public to eliminate them from politics policymaking whatsoever.

The importance of liberty and knowledge is that people should be more cooperative and reason about authority after gaining the experience to do so.

Why? Because it helps advance the government to start treating people, all people fairly.

According to Kant, if people can critique such religious institutions; they will be able to act upon freedom (Kant page 3). Kant had two types of reasons for this.

Private: obeying the order even if you believe that order isn’t fulfilling your role.

Public: to have the right to criticize and tell your thoughts about the order to the public, not worrying about any consequences happening from the state. “But only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of shadows, and who commands at the same time a well disciplined and numerous army as guarantor of public peace–only he can say what [the sovereign of] a free state cannot dare to say” (Kant page 3). Hence, this freedom of giving your own thoughts or criticism to the public benefited the public to grow and become better as a whole.

Overall, in my opinion; Kant on his theories on “The Enlightenment” and his belief that the states and religious institutions are considered as fair to every person who wants to exercise his or her own views or beliefs. The following claim: “By the late 18th Century and continuing to the present, access to knowledge had replaced private property ownership as the most important condition for the exercise of liberty.” Is valid because we can demonstrate how Kent’s observations had improved liberty, allowing states to advance and benefit due to the power of liberty and knowledge.