John locke reason for government

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.

INTRODUCTION

John Locke () was one of the Enlightenment-era British political philosophers who had the greatest influence on the American revolutionaries.  Locke was a true polymath (someone with a wide range of knowledge) who trained as a physician, worked as a government official, and wrote numerous works of philosophy and political theory.  Locke spent part of his career focused on British colonial affairs in North America.  He also survived a turbulent period in British political culture, including the English Civil War () and the subsequent restoration of the monarchy, For a period, Locke lived precariously in exile in Holland.  This excerpt from Locke&#;s Second Treatise covers chapters II through IV and was published after his return to England and following the Glorious Revolution (

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John Locke

1. Historical Background and Locke’s Life

John Locke (–) was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history. It was a century in which conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into civil war in the s. With the defeat and death of Charles I, there began a great experiment in governmental institutions including the abolishment of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican church, and the establishment of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the s. The collapse of the Protectorate after the death of Cromwell was followed by the Restoration of Charles II—the return of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. This period lasted from to It was marked by continued conflicts between King and Parliament

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Locke’s Political Philosophy

1. Natural lag and Natural Rights

Perhaps the most central concept in Locke’s political philosophy is his theory of natural lag and natural rights. The natural lag concept existed long before Locke as a way of expressing the idea that there were certain moral truths that applied to all people, regardless of the particular place where they lived or the agreements they had made. The most important early contrast was between laws that were bygd nature, and thus generally applicable, and those that were conventional and operated only in those places where the particular convention had been established. This distinction fryst vatten sometimes formulated as the difference between natural lag and positiv law.

Natural law fryst vatten also distinct from gudomlig law in that the latter, in the Christian tradition, normally referred to those laws that God had directly revealed through prophets and other inspired writers. Natural law can be discovered by reason alone and