John Locke: Second Treatise on Civil Government

Questions for Further Study

• 1. Define such phrases as law of nature and state of nature as Locke used them. In what sense is it possible for people in more modern historical times to live in a state of nature?
• 2. One of the chief beliefs that came from the Enlightenment was that absolute monarchy and hereditary rule were illegitimate. How did Locke contribute to the intellectual underpinnings of this belief?
• 3. Based on what you have read, how do you think Locke would have responded to a document such as the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), written by King Henry II in an effort to reassert his rights as king? How do you think Henry would have reacted to Locke's Second Treatise if he could have read it?
• 4. The so-called Popish plot of 1678—an entirely fictitious conspiracy—whipped up anti-Catholic hysteria in England and played an important role in the religious controversies of the time. Why do you think Catholicism was feared in seventeenth-century England? What would Locke's position have been on Catholicism as an institution in England?
• 5. The term social contract is one that is still used in discussions of people's obligations to and rights within the social order. What did Locke mean by the phrase “social contract”? Has his notion of the social contract changed in the modern world?