⚖️Power & OrderPower & Order
🏠 Home🌐 中文
Power & OrderORDER
📃

Locke

Original nameJohn Locke

Father of liberalism, founder of natural rights

Asking Where Power Comes From · Political Thinkers
Political PhilosophyNatural RightsLimited GovernmentProperty

Who they are

An English philosopher revered as the father of classical liberalism. He rebutted Hobbes head-on: man in the state of nature is no wolf, but born with rights to "life, liberty, and property." Government exists because the people covenant to authorize it to better protect these rights — so its power is limited and conditional; once it violates the people’s basic rights, the people have the right to resist it, and even to replace it. This thought of "natural rights," "limited government," and "the people’s right to revolt" directly kindled the American and French revolutions that followed.

Primary sourcesLocke, Two Treatises of GovernmentA Letter Concerning Toleration

Key stories

The Thought Written into the Declaration

Locke said man is born with rights to "life, liberty, and property," and government’s sole purpose is to protect them. Over eighty years later, Jefferson, drafting the American Declaration of Independence, all but transcribed this line of thought, only changing "property" to the more stirring "pursuit of happiness" — "all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." One philosopher’s study-bound thought became a nation’s founding declaration.

Relationships

Nemesis
🐊Hobbes　at odds with Hobbes over the state of nature and sovereignty

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The thought written into the DeclarationLocke’s "life, liberty, property" and "the people’s right to resist" were all but transcribed by Jefferson into the American Declaration of Independence — the most important intellectual source of classical liberalism and modern constitutionalism.

Appears in

Realpolitik and the Social ContractLocke: Natural Rights and Limited Government
← Back to Figures