Description

Overview:

John Locke’s treatise “An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government,” often called simply the Second Treatise of Government is probably the most influential work of political theory in the English language. Locke’s essay was widely read in the English-speaking world of the eighteenth century, and his arguments about government, consent, and property rights (just to name three of its main topics) became fundamental to the way that western people have conceived of these ideas ever since. Locke (1632-1704) provided some of the intellectual underpinning for the American revolution of the 1770s and 80s; many of the writers who supported the revolt against Parliament and the British Crown, such as Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine, had read Locke, and you can see his emphasis on the need for government to have the consent of the governed reflected in their works.

Subject:

English Language Arts

Level:

Community College / Lower Division, College / Upper Division

Material Type:

Reading

Author:

John Locke

Provider:

The Open Anthology of Literature in English

Date Added:

07/10/2017