JOHN LOCKE AND JOHN PAUL II ON THE NATURE OF WORK.

• Author: Mikochik, Stephen L.

My aim in this paper is to describe how John Paul II explains the nature of human work. To that end, I will focus on his 1981 Encyclical, Laborem Exercens. (1) Before that discussion, I will briefly outline how John Locke addresses the same issue in his 1690 Second Treatise on Civil Government. (2) I choose Locke because of his importance to the American Founding Generation and because his understanding of work reveals the sophistication of John Paul II's explanation. Indeed, John Paul II identifies a dimension of work, the subjective, which Locke fails completely to appreciate.

Near the beginning of the Second Treatise, Locke claims that all humans are equal. (3) By "equal," he does not mean "all sorts of equality...." (4) Rather, all persons are in "a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature...." (5) He reaches this conclusion since there is "nothing more evident, than creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection...." (6)

Locke is claiming that humans are equal since they all share in reason and that they are equally free since they all have free will. (7) The freedom Locke identifies is from domination by others in the state of nature, the original position of humans before the creation of civil government. That said, humans are not free from all restraint since, as creatures, they must follow the law of their Creator:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker; ... they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's pleasure.... (8) Though quoting Richard Hooker, who implies that the law of nature imposes some affirmative duties on humans to assist each other, (9) Locke's focus appears more on negative precepts:

Everyone,... when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he,... to preserve the rest of mankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. (10) To repeat, humans are naturally free from each other's domination since they share in the capacities of reason and free will. Nevertheless, they are bound as creatures not to destroy themselves nor the lives and property of others (without sufficient justification). (11) With this background, I proceed to Locke's description of property and human work.

Locke takes no notice of the pragmatic reasons for private property that Aristotle (12) and St. Thomas (13) consider. (14) His interest is how to justify private property when resources initially are in common. Nevertheless, a distinctive understanding of human work emerges from his justification for such property.

Locke begins his discussion of property by acknowledging that resources were first...