%0 Journal Article
%T The American Frontier as State of Nature
%A Michael J. Faber
%J World Affairs
%@ 1940-1582
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0043820018776408
%X John Locke claims that “in the beginning, all the world was America.” If this were, in fact, the case, then the early American frontier ought to resemble the state of nature that Locke describes. Louis Hartz finds in early American settlement a sort of instinctive Lockeanism, while Frederick Jackson Turner sees in the frontier the primary determining factor in American development. Combining the two suggests that American society may well have developed along Lockean lines, but only if the frontier was in fact at least an approximation of Locke’s state of nature. The frontier does resemble such a state in certain respects, though Locke’s concepts of natural law and justice are conspicuously absent, or at least very weak. This helps to explain why the Americanized version of Locke described by Hartz, rather than a more accurate and complete reading, became the dominant ideological force in early American political development
%K Political Theory
%K John Locke
%K State of Nature
%K United States
%K The Frontier
%K American Society
%K American Exceptionalism
%K Louis Hartz
%K Lockean Principles
%K American Settlers
%K Native Americans
%K Violence
%K Peace
%K Land
%K Property Rights
%K American Democracy
%K Participation
%K Frederick Jackson Turner
%K teoría política
%K John Locke
%K estado de naturaleza
%K Frontera de Estados Unidos
%K sociedad estadounidense
%K Louis Hartz
%K 政治理论
%K 约翰·洛克
%K 自然国度
%K 美国边疆
%K 美国社会
%K 路易斯·哈茨
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0043820018776408