John Locke

The Second Treatise of Government is one of the most important political treatises ever written and one of the most far-reaching in its influence. In his provocative 15-page introduction to this edition, the late eminent political theorist C. B. Macpherson examines Locke's arguments for limited, conditional government, private property, and the right of revolution. He also suggests reasons for the...

Two of Locke's most mature and influential political writings and three brilliant interpretive essays have been combined here in one volume. Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke's Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration remain vital to political debates more than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts...

Includes generous selections from the Essay, topically arranged passages from the replies to Stillingfleet, a chronology, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index based on the entries that Locke himself devised.

John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (c1681) is perhaps the key founding liberal text. A Letter Concerning Toleration, written in 1685 (a year when a Catholic monarch came to the throne of England and Louis XVI unleashed a reign of terror against Protestants in France), is a classic defence of religious freedom. Yet many of Locke's other writings—not least the...