Politics
1632 to 1704, Somerset, England
Natural rights, consent, and the foundations of liberalism.
Start learning John →Why your rights come before any government, and what makes power legitimate - Locke’s overturning of the divine right of kings.
Locke’s claim that the mind begins empty, all knowledge comes from experience - and why that was politically explosive.
How Locke justified private property through the mixing of labour - and how the same argument ended up sanctioning vast inequality and colonial dispossession.
Locke’s case for separating the church from the power of the state - that belief cannot be coerced, so persecution is both wrong and futile.
Locke’s most explosive claim: that when a government betrays the people’s trust and turns to tyranny, the people may rightfully resist, dissolve it, and start anew.
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