Two Treatises of Government

Written against a defence of kings as fathers, published unsigned, and acknowledged only in Locke's will.

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1689(aged 57)
Original language: English

Overview

Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha argued that kings rule as fathers do. God gave Adam authority over his children, that authority passed down by inheritance, and a subject has no more right to judge his king than a child has to judge his father. Filmer wrote it before the English Civil War; it was printed in 1680, long after his death, during the attempt in Parliament to bar the Catholic Duke of York, the future James II, from the throne. Locke wrote the Two Treatises of Government in answer, in the circle of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who led the campaign against the Duke. Most of it dates from between 1679 and 1683, though scholars dispute the exact years. The first treatise takes Filmer apart: nobody can show which living man is Adam's heir. The second builds the alternative. People are born free and equal under a law of nature, they own what they have mixed their labour with, and they set up government by consent to protect their lives, liberties and possessions. Rulers hold power in trust, and a people whose ruler breaks that trust may resist and replace him. Locke kept the manuscript unpublished through more than five years of exile in Holland and printed it only after James II had fallen. It appeared late in 1689, dated 1690 and unsigned, with a preface explaining that the middle of the manuscript had been lost. He would not admit the book was his even to his old friend James Tyrrell, and he acknowledged it only in a codicil to his will dated 15 September 1704, six weeks before he died. It drew little notice at first: of some two hundred tracts on the Revolution printed between 1689 and 1694, three mention it. Its readers came later, above all in the American colonies, and its language of consent and trust is echoed in the Declaration of Independence.

Key concepts

What is the state of nature in the Two Treatises?

It is the condition of people who live together with no common superior on earth to judge between them. Locke describes it as a state of freedom and equality, but not of licence, because the law of nature binds everyone in it. His examples are a Swiss and an Indian bargaining in the woods of America, and the rulers of independent countries, who are in it with one another still.

What does Locke mean by the law of nature?

The law of nature is a rule that reason can find without any government: since all people are equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. Locke grounds it in all people being the workmanship of one maker. In the state of nature everyone may punish those who break it, and it continues to bind rulers and lawmakers afterwards.

What does “property” mean in the Second Treatise?

Locke uses the word in two senses. In the narrow one it means goods and land. In the wide one, which he states more than once, it covers a person’s life, liberty and estate together, everything that is his own and may not be taken without his consent. When he says government exists to preserve property, he means this wider sense.

What is prerogative?

Prerogative is the executive’s power to act for the public good where the law is silent, and sometimes even against the letter of the law. Locke allows it because lawmakers cannot foresee every case: pulling down a house to stop a fire may break a rule and save a town. It is limited by its purpose, and used against the people’s good it becomes an abuse.

How does Locke distinguish usurpation from tyranny?

Usurpation is taking a power that belongs to someone else: the wrong person holds the office, though the office itself is lawful. Tyranny is using power beyond what anyone has a right to, for the ruler’s private advantage and not for the good of the governed. Locke’s short formula is that where law ends, tyranny begins. A lawful king can therefore be a tyrant.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

No King by Right of Fatherhood

Can a king’s power be a father’s power, handed down from Adam? If it cannot, no ruler alive holds his throne by birth alone, and political authority needs another source.

The First Treatise follows Filmer text by text. Genesis gave Adam no rule over other people, only a share with all mankind in the earth and its creatures. The commandment says honour thy father and thy mother, which makes a poor charter for a single monarch. Even granting Adam a crown, it would have had one heir, and nobody can say which living man he is. Locke then separates what Filmer fused. A father’s authority is temporary care for children who cannot yet reason, and it ends when they can. Political power is a different thing with a different origin, which the Second Treatise supplies.

patriarchalism
divine right
inheritance
hereditary succession
primogeniture
parental authority
absolute monarchy
scriptural interpretation
biblical interpretation
monarchy

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Labour Makes Property

If the earth was given to all people in common, how can any part of it rightly become one person’s? The answer has to explain ownership without anyone’s permission, and say where it stops.

The chapter on property starts from self-ownership: each person owns his body and the work of his hands. Whatever he removes from the common state by that work becomes his, with no need to ask the other commoners. Two limits come in the same breath. He may take only what he can use before it spoils, and only where enough and as good is left for others. Labour, Locke argues, accounts for nearly all the value things have, which is why tilled land outweighs waste land many times over. Then money arrives: gold does not rot, people agree to accept it, and larger, unequal holdings become possible.

property
labor
property rights
common ownership
natural law
state of nature

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Consent, Trust and the Right to Resist

Why should free and equal people obey a government at all, and when may they stop? The Second Treatise answers by making every ruler a trustee who can be dismissed.

In the state of nature everyone may enforce the law of nature, so everyone is judge in his own case. Government cures that: people agree to set up a common judge and a legislature bound by standing laws, to protect their lives, liberties and estates. The power they hand over is held in trust. An absolute monarch, still judge in his own case, remains in the state of nature with his subjects. When rulers act against the trust, by a long train of abuses and not a single slip, they put themselves at war with the people, who may resist and set up a new legislature.

consent
political legitimacy
political authority
resistance
tyranny
rule of law
executive power
popular sovereignty
public good
political obligation
conquest

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 409
distinct concepts: 309
by passages held, corpus-wide: #182

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “political authority” and “property”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
political authority	property	25
political legitimacy	sovereignty	24
hereditary succession	political legitimacy	20
political authority	sovereignty	19
inheritance	property	18
hereditary succession	political authority	16
inheritance	political authority	16
consent	political authority	15
consent	political legitimacy	13
inheritance	sovereignty	13
inheritance	political legitimacy	12
political authority	political legitimacy	12
consent	property	11
property	sovereignty	11
natural law	political authority	10
natural law	property	10
inheritance	natural law	8
hereditary succession	sovereignty	5
consent	inheritance	4
political legitimacy	property	3
consent	natural law	2
consent	sovereignty	2
hereditary succession	natural law	2
natural law	political legitimacy	2
consent	hereditary succession	1
hereditary succession	inheritance	1
hereditary succession	property	1
natural law	sovereignty	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1689 A Letter Concerning Toleration (Epistola de Tolerantia)
The one statement of his case for religious freedom that Locke made briefly and to a friend. Everything else he printed on the subject defends this text against one of its critics, Jonas Proast.
EN
1689 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
The book Locke's reputation rests on, and the one major work of 1689 that he signed. His quarrel with Bishop Stillingfleet, the unfinished Conduct of the Understanding and the letters to William Molyneux all grow out of it.
EN
1689 Two Treatises of Government you are here EN
1690 Further Letters Concerning Toleration
A sequel in three parts to A Letter Concerning Toleration: Locke's second and third letters and the fragment of a fourth, each a reply to the Oxford chaplain Jonas Proast. The third is where he tests his case hardest.
EN
1693 Some Thoughts Concerning Education
Written for the household of his friend Edward Clarke and enlarged by Locke through several editions. It is his book of practical advice on raising a child, and it applies the Essay's view that the mind is formed by what it meets.
EN
1695 The Reasonableness of Christianity
His main work on religion, and the opening of the study of Scripture that occupied his last years. He defended it twice against John Edwards, a Cambridge Calvinist, and kept his name off all three books while he lived.
EN
1696 Several Papers Relating to Money, Interest and Trade
Advice written for ministers and for Parliament during the currency crisis of the 1690s, and gathered under Locke's name in 1696. The account of money behind it is sketched in the chapter on property in the Two Treatises.
EN
1697 Letters to the Bishop of Worcester
Locke's own commentary on the Essay, written under attack: three replies to Edward Stillingfleet, issued as separate pamphlets between 1697 and 1699, with a short answer to a second critic, Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charterhouse.
EN
1706 Of the Conduct of the Understanding
An unfinished draft, printed from Locke's papers two years after his death. It is the practical companion to the Essay and overlaps with his advice on education.
EN
1706 Posthumous Works
From the volume of unpublished papers that Locke's executors issued in 1706: a critique of Malebranche from the 1690s and a short discourse on miracles from 1702. Both extend arguments begun in the Essay.
EN
1708 Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of His Friends
Letters to the Molyneux brothers of Dublin — Locke's side of the correspondence — taken from a volume his publishers issued in 1708. It is the closest view of him at work on the later editions of the Essay.
EN
1720 A Collection of Several Pieces
The Carolina constitution of 1669 predates the Two Treatises by ten years or more, and the two are often set against each other. Pierre Des Maizeaux published it in 1720 together with shorter pieces left out of the collected works.
EN

— or open another of their works

Two Treatises of Government

Overview

Key concepts

What is the state of nature in the Two Treatises?

What does Locke mean by the law of nature?

What does “property” mean in the Second Treatise?

What is prerogative?

How does Locke distinguish usurpation from tyranny?

Themes of the book

1No King by Right of Fatherhood

2Labour Makes Property

3Consent, Trust and the Right to Resist

Within this work

What this book thinks together

Works held

No King by Right of Fatherhood

Labour Makes Property

Consent, Trust and the Right to Resist