Who was John Locke?
John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher whose Two Treatises of Government established the theory of natural rights and government by consent that became the intellectual foundation of modern liberal democracy. His ideas about life, liberty, and property directly influenced the American Declaration of Independence and constitutional governments worldwide.
John Locke was the philosopher whose political ideas became the intellectual foundation of modern democracy. Born in 1632 in Somerset, England, and educated at Oxford, he lived through the tumultuous period of the English Civil War, Commonwealth, Restoration, and Glorious Revolution — experiences that shaped his conviction that legitimate government must be based on the consent of the governed.
Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1689), published in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, laid out a comprehensive theory of legitimate political authority. In the First Treatise, he demolished the doctrine of divine right monarchy. In the Second, he argued that humans in a 'state of nature' possessed natural rights to life, liberty, and property. They formed governments through a social contract to protect these rights. If a government violated its trust by infringing on natural rights, the people had the right — indeed the duty — to resist and replace it.
These ideas were revolutionary in their implications, even if Locke expressed them cautiously. The notion that political authority derived from below (the consent of the governed) rather than from above (God's appointment of kings) inverted the entire traditional political order. Thomas Jefferson drew directly on Locke when writing the Declaration of Independence, substituting 'pursuit of happiness' for 'property' in the trinity of natural rights.
Locke's influence extended beyond politics. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) argued that the mind at birth was a 'tabula rasa' (blank slate), that all knowledge came from experience, and that reason was the ultimate judge of truth. This empiricist philosophy profoundly influenced the Enlightenment and modern psychology. His Letter Concerning Toleration argued for religious freedom — though he excluded Catholics and atheists from his vision of tolerance.
Locke's limitations reflect his era — he invested in the slave trade, his theory of property was used to justify colonial land seizures, and his 'universal' rights were implicitly limited to propertied European men. Yet his core insight — that individuals possess inherent rights that governments exist to protect — remains the bedrock of democratic political thought worldwide.