Consent cannot justify self-enslavement because no one owns his own life

Evidence

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 31

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the hard limit on consent as a legitimating device, foundational to social contract theory.
• QUESTION: Need to trace how this non-waivable liberty argument animates later due-process and anti-slavery reasoning, e.g., 13th Amendment debates.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s course material on which liberties are treated as inalienable in American constitutional thought paired with ch102’s state of war. — connects to: Slavery is a continuing state of war, not a legitimate compact — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 32; Mass consent does not make a society rational, only repressive — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 93; The willing self-exploiter is an absolute slave without a master — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New…, 14