United KingdomWho was John Locke?
John Locke trained in medicine at Oxford and became physician and adviser to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, a leader of the opposition to Charles II. He spent the 1680s in exile in the Netherlands and returned after the Revolution of 1688. In 1689 and 1690 he published the Two Treatises of Government, A Letter Concerning Toleration and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. His political theory argues that people in a state of nature have natural rights and form governments by consent to secure them, and that governments which betray this trust may be resisted.
Political views
Held that all people are naturally free and equal and bound by a law of nature that forbids harming others in life, health, liberty or possessions.
Source: gutenberg.orgArgued that individuals acquire property by mixing their labor with unowned resources, within limits of waste and sufficiency for others.
Source: plato.stanford.eduDefended majority rule, legislative supremacy and a separation of legislative and executive power.
Source: plato.stanford.eduArgued that a people may resist and replace a government that violates their rights or the trust placed in it.
Source: iep.utm.eduDenied that rulers should use coercion to bring people to the true religion, and denied churches any coercive power over their members.
Source: plato.stanford.eduDescribed the chief end of civil government as the preservation of property, which he defined broadly as lives, liberties and estates.
Source: press-pubs.uchicago.eduHeld that governments must not raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the people or their deputies.
Source: gutenberg.org
Legacy
Locke is often called a founder of liberalism, and his language of natural rights and consent influenced the American Declaration of Independence and later constitutional thought. Classical liberals and libertarians cite his theory of property, while others read him as allowing substantial public regulation of property for the common good. Critics have pointed to his involvement in colonial affairs, including evidence that he helped revise the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, and debate whether his treatment of hunting lands as vacant helped justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples.
In their words
Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.