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Locke, John Columbia Encyclopedia John Locke Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy John Locke Oxford Companion to Philosophy John Locke Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy John Locke Encyclopedia Britannica John Locke Encarta John Locke Wikipedia John Locke Thoemmes Encyclopedia of the History of Ideas
Questions of Rights Liberty and Social Contracts
The proper aim of human knowledge, he supposed, lies not in the satisfaction of attaining abstract speculative truth, but rather in its application to practical conduct, upon which our happiness in this world and the next ultimately depends.
All rights begin in the individual property interest created by an investment of labor. The social structure or commonwealth depends for its formation and maintenance on the express consent of those who are governed by its political powers. Majority rule thus becomes the cornerstone of all political order, and dissatisfied citizens reserve a lasting right to revolution. Similarly, Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued for a broad (though not limitless) acceptance of alternative religious convictions.
Locke on Morality Garth Kemerling
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) on this site
Second Treatise of Government (1690, 1764) on this site
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)
Where there is no Property, there is no Injustice, is a Proposition as certain as any Demonstration in Euclid: For the Idea of Property, being a right to any thing; and the Idea to which the name Injustice is given, being the Invasion or Violation of that right; it is evident, that these Ideas being thus established, and these Names annexed to them, I can as certainly know this Proposition to be true, as that a Triangle has three Angles equal to two right ones. Again, No Government allows absolute Liberty: The Idea of Government being the establishment of Society upon certain Rules or Laws, which require Conformity to them; and the Idea of absolute Liberty being for any one to do whatever he pleases; I am as capable of being certain of the Truth of this Proposition, as of any in Mathematicks. [Essay IV iii 18]