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Two Treatises of Government

Political Philosophy and Theoretical Works

Two Treatises of Government is John Locke's 1689 work of political philosophy. The First Treatise refutes the theory of the divine right of kings, and the Second Treatise argues that legitimate government arises from the consent of the governed to protect natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that a government which violates that trust may justly be resisted. It profoundly influenced later constitutional and revolutionary thought, including the American Declaration of Independence.

Facts
Year
1689 1
Key Provision
The First Treatise refutes Robert Filmer's argument for the divine and patriarchal right of kings; the Second Treatise argues that legitimate government arises from the consent of the governed to protect natural rights to life, liberty and property, and that a government which violates that trust may rightly be resisted and replaced. 1
Classification
Document Type
Political Philosophy or Theoretical Work 1
Original Language
English 2
Connections

Drafted By

John Locke, Political Figures

Locke published the Two Treatises anonymously in 1689, only acknowledging authorship near the end of his life.

Source Locke's Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Influenced

Consent of the Governed, Political Concepts
Source Locke's Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Liberalism, Ideologies
Source Locke's Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
In the Other Atlases

Same As

Two Treatises of Government

Also in Philosophy Atlas: the same subject.

Sources
1. Locke's Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Document type, description
    Two Treatises of Government is John Locke's 1689 work of political philosophy.
  • Section discussing the Second Treatise and consent of the governed
  • Influenced: Consent of the Governed
  • Influenced: Liberalism
  • Drafted By: John Locke, Page text
    In the Two Treatises of Government , he defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch.
  • Drafted By: John Locke, Section discussing the Two Treatises
View the Source
2. Two Treatises of Government (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIn Group: Early Modern Political Works, 1500 to 1800, Lead paragraph
Quote, In Group: Early Modern Political Works, 1500 to 1800, Lead paragraph
It was published anonymously in 1689
View the Source
Wikidata: Two Treatises of Government
Wikidata Q139954691, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description

Locke's Second Treatise (chapter 5) grounds property in labor mixed with land held in common, and singles out uncultivated land as effectively unclaimed ("waste") until improved. Scholars including James Tully and Barbara Arneil have argued this theory, whatever Locke's intent, supplied European colonists a ready philosophical justification for treating Indigenous land in the Americas as unowned and available for appropriation, since Indigenous land use did not always fit Locke's enclosure-and-cultivation model of labor. Other Locke scholars hold this reads a specific colonial application back into a general theory of property Locke did not frame around dispossession, and that the connection is drawn more by Locke's later readers than by the text itself.

A dissenting reading, from Postcolonial scholarship on Locke's labor theory of propertyLocke's Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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