PATIENT
Locke, Second Treatise
AUTHOR
John Locke (1632–1704)
PUBLISHED
1689/1690, anonymously
FORM
Political philosophy, 19 chapters
CHIEF COMPLAINT
If everyone is born free and equal, what gives anyone the right to rule?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
Written after England's crises of the 1680s, in answer to the divine right of kings. Locke's argument: people are born free and equal under a natural law that reason can discover. They form governments to protect their lives, liberties and property. Government rests on consent and is held in trust, and when it breaks the trust the people may change it. Those ideas fill the Declaration of Independence. The text also has uncomfortable parts, which this guide shows.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
NATURE
Free and equal people under a law of nature. No one is born with a right to rule another.
PROPERTY
You own your body and your labor, and what you mix your work with. With limits: no waste, and enough and as good left for others.
CONSENT
No one is subject to another's political power without consent. Government is a trust.
RESISTANCE
When the trust is broken, the people may remove it. A last resort, after long abuses.
LIMITS
His ties to slavery and colonial land are part of the record, and the guide shows them.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —The First Treatise is the direct reply to Sir Robert Filmer, who defended the divine right of kings.
- —Locke wrote 'lives, liberties and estates.' The Declaration says 'life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.'
- —He was involved with the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which gave free men power over enslaved people (scholars dispute how much), and came to hold shares in the Royal African Company, which he later sold.
- —Founding-era writers cited the Bible, Montesquieu and Blackstone more often than Locke.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Read chapters II (state of nature), V (property) and XIX (dissolution of government). Every claim is tagged Settled, Disputed or Popular myth with a source, and both sides of the live arguments (what his property theory implies, how to read his ties to slavery) show at equal length in the full Study Guide.