John Locke: Second Treatise on Civil Government

About the Author

Locke was born in Wrington, England, on August 29, 1632, to Puritan parents. During the English Civil War in the 1640s his father fought for the Parliamentarians. He attended the Westminster School in London and was made a King's Scholar. In 1652 he entered the Christ Church college at Oxford University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1656 and a master's in 1658. He discovered, however, that his interest lay less with the classical subjects taught at Oxford and more with newly emerging experimental sciences and medicine. Inspired by the empirical views of such thinkers as Sir Francis Bacon and René Descartes, he began to investigate natural science subjects, eventually joining England's Royal Society in 1668. In the 1660s he collaborated on experiments with Robert Boyle, considered the father of modern chemistry. In his journals and correspondence between 1656 and 1666 are repeated references to his interests in natural science and in the study of society, politics, and moral philosophy.

In 1666 Locke met Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper and became his personal adviser on general affairs—an important relationship because Baron Ashley was an active politician who supported a constitutional monarchy, Protestant succession, civil liberties, toleration of religion, the rule of Parliament, and the expansion of the British Empire for trade. Ashley, later the First Earl of Shaftesbury, was one of the sponsors of the bill to exclude James II from succeeding to the throne, and in the aftermath he was tried for treason but was acquitted. After the Rye House Plot was uncovered, Locke fled to Holland, fearing that he would be tainted by his association with Lord Shaftesbury. Meanwhile, throughout the late 1660s and 1670s he was intimately involved with issues of trade and colonization while continuing his studies and gathering ideas for one of his most famous works, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. This book, published in 1689, proved to be a cornerstone of Enlightenment views about perception, sensation, reason, knowledge, and the relationship between knowledge and faith. In 1690 he published his political masterpiece, Two Treatises of Government. After a stint at the newly created Board of Trade, he retired to a country estate in Essex called Oates, where he died on October 28, 1704.