A topic in the Open Knowledge Graph — a free, open map of 15,290 topics and the order to learn them in.
Locke holds that individuals possess natural rights — to life, liberty, and property — that exist prior to and independently of any political authority. Government is legitimate only insofar as it protects these pre-political rights, and authority derives from the ongoing consent of the governed. When a government violates natural rights or rules without consent, the people have a right to revolution. Locke's labor theory of property holds that mixing one's labor with unowned resources generates ownership, a claim with profound implications for distributive justice.
Read the Second Treatise of Government (1689), focusing on Chapters 2, 5, and 19. Compare Locke's right of revolution with Hobbes's denial of it, and evaluate Locke's labor theory of property — does it justify unlimited accumulation?
You already know the social contract tradition: political authority is legitimate not because rulers have divine sanction, but because free individuals consented (at least hypothetically) to form a political community. Locke builds on this framework but adds a crucial pre-political foundation: natural rights — moral claims to life, liberty, and property that individuals possess independently of any government, in virtue of being rational persons created by God.
The order matters. For Locke, rights come first; government comes second. In the state of nature — before any political authority — people are free and equal, governed only by natural law (a law of reason Locke derives from divine creation). The problem with the state of nature is not Hobbesian war, as Locke emphasizes: people already have natural rights and natural law obligates them to respect others. The problem is enforcement: there is no impartial judge, and each person must enforce their own rights, leading to escalating disputes. People enter political society not to escape chaos but to create reliable enforcement of pre-existing rights they already have.
Locke's labor theory of property is the most philosophically ambitious and controversial part. Before any government or convention, how does private property arise? Locke's answer: when you mix your labor with unowned natural resources — clear the land, till the soil, hunt the game — you extend yourself into that thing and acquire ownership of it. Labor is yours; you own the product of your labor. The justification is self-ownership: since you own your own body and labor, you acquire rights in what your labor transforms. Two provisos limit this: you must leave "enough and as good" for others (the Lockean proviso), and you may not let goods spoil (the spoilage proviso). Locke then argues that the invention of money dissolves the spoilage limit, allowing unlimited accumulation — a move critics find suspiciously convenient.
Government's role, on this picture, is strictly protective. Its only legitimate purpose is to protect the natural rights that existed before it. When a government violates those rights — taxes without consent, rules arbitrarily — it forfeits its authority, and the people have a right of revolution. This is the radical implication that influenced the American Declaration of Independence. But notice: the right of revolution is not a right to create any new government, but to restore the protection of the natural rights that legitimate government exists to serve.
The deepest challenge to Locke is that the labor theory of property, even if accepted, justifies only initial acquisition from genuinely unowned resources — a condition that rarely holds once history is considered. Virtually all property today traces back through chains of transfer that include conquest, expropriation, and dispossession. Robert Nozick attempted to reconstruct a Lockean theory that handles historical injustice; G. A. Cohen and others argued the project is irremediably flawed.
Topics in reflective domains aren't scored by quiz answers. Read, reflect, and mark when you've thought it through.