preview

John Locke Tacit Consent

Decent Essays

Consent is the giving of permission for something to happen. This may seem like a simple concept, but when looking further into the ways we as humans give consent makes this subject a little more complicated. We give consent everyday. We make agreements, promises, contracts, etc. with the people and communities of our daily lives. Consent can come in different forms. Locke described his theory of consent by explaining what he thought of as the two different types: express and tacit. Looking into these types of consent we can fully understand Locke’s interpretation of consent when it comes to a society and their government and his theory of tacit consent. Express consent is giving the permission for something to happen either by action, verbally or in writing. An example of this would be going into a doctor’s office …show more content…

I think this because in the United State’s we have many problems with authority figures over stepping their boundaries and harming the citizens for no valid reason. One example of this would be with police brutality. Why would a citizen simple let a police to beat them because they agree tacitly to giving them power? The citizens need the right to stand up and use their voices to disagree with situations like this. This objection can be thought about in two ways. The person that is the victim of police brutality does not give the police officer the consent to beat them just because they do not do anything to prevent it. The person out of fear or other reasoning is incapable to fight back. Another way to look at the objection is that just because a person stays a citizen of the United States after an incident like police brutality, they aren't giving consent for it to happen again or agreeing that the government has the power to do things of brutality to its citizens. It is a situation that Locke doesn't seem to touch on and that’s a huge

Get Access