Robert Goldwin, "Locke's State of Nature in Political Society," Western Political Quarterly 29 (1976), 126-135.

Excerpt:

“Readers of the Two Treatises of Government have long wondered about the meaning of Locke’s discussion of the state of nature. Did Locke think that the state of nature really existed, or did he present it as an invented or imagined state? The question has been put in this form: Is Locke’s state of nature moral fiction, historical fact, a combination of both, or something else? I shall argue that, for Locke, (1) the state of nature is a fact, not fiction; (2) the state of nature is a fact of the present and the future as well as of the past (and is, therefore, not “historical” in the sense of something once, but no longer, existing); (3) the state of nature is no more nor less moral than anything else in the Two Treatises of Government (a work distinguished from most of Locke’s other writings by the complete absence of the words “moral,” “morals,” and “morality”); and, finally, (4) the state of nature is not only a persistent fact but a necessary and pervasive component of political life.”

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