Moral Economy in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Locke’s Second Treatise of Government :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Moral Economy in Defoes Robinson Crusoe and Lockes Second Treatise of Government James Joyce on Robinson Crusoe the homosexual al wizard, on a desert island, constructing a simple and moral parsimoniousness which becomes the basis of a commonwealth presided over by a openhearted sovereign (Liu 731). Issues of property and ownership were important during the 18th century twain to scholars and the common man. The case of America demonstrates that politicians, such as Thomas Jefferson, were extremely influenced by John Lockes ideas including those on property and the individuals right to it. Readers in the revolutionary era were also deeply kindle in issues of spirituality and independence and read Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe. Both Locke and Defoe appeal the issues of property, private ownership, and property accumulation, connecting them with the notions of individual and political independence. Although they appear to converge, their philosophies vary greatly on these top ics. Several scholars conclude that both Defoes and Lockes ideals backup the development of a moral economy although neither express this desire directly. Locke theorizeds extensively on property, privatization, and the means an individual can use for increase his property. Initially, in the state of spirit, man did not own property in the form of resources or land. All fruits of the earth were for the use of all men,and nothing has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in both(prenominal) of them, as they are thus in their inhering state (Locke 353). In this state, people could appropriate only what they could make use of. It was unfair for one person to take more than he could use because some of that natural commodity would go to waste unless another man might wee made use of it for his own benefit (360). Locke felt that God gave the bounties of nature to the people of earth and they, by default, should treat these bounties rationally. This rationalistic theory discourages waste. check to Lockes theory, a commodity becomes the private possession of an individual who labors for it. thereof it is no longer a direct gift of nature A man that so employed his pains about some(prenominal) of the spontaneous products of nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a propriety in them ( 360).