Major Works

• Two Treatises of Government

  - Recommended edition: Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
  Excerpt: Thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not worth while to tell thee. These, which… More

• An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

  - Recommended edition: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).
  Excerpt: Since it is the understanding, that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion, which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The… More

Commentary

• Anarchy, State, and Utopia

  - Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
  Excerpt: “We slow down the dramatic pace of our tale in order to consider Locke’s views on parental ownership of children. Locke must discuss Filmer in detail, not merely to clear the field of some alternative curious view, but to show why that… More

• “Locke’s Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism”

  - Ruth Grant, "Locke's Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism," Review of Politics 50 (1988), 42-63.
  Locke’s anthropological accounts do not depict isolated individuals whose behavior is governed by rational calculations of their interests. He is not an “atomistic” individualist; he acknowledges what communitarian critics of liberalism… More

• The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke’s Political Thought

  - Uday Mehta, The Anxiety of Freedom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
  Summary: Against what he describes as the “all but canonical” reading of Locke as a narrowly political theorist, concerned with erecting institutional fences to prevent naturally free, rational, interested individuals from violating one… More

• The Human Condition

  - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
  A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the… More

• Duty Bound

  - Mark Blitz, Duty Bound: Responsibility and American Public Life, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
  From the publisher: In this timely and enlightening new work, Mark Blitz explores the link between character and politics in liberal democracies, focusing on the importance of responsibility in American public and professional life. He begins by analyzing the… More

• “The Charitable John Locke”

  - Steven Forde, "The Charitable John Locke," Review of Politics, 71 (2009), 428-458.
  Locke’s political philosophy, like any that centers on individual rights such as property rights, raises the question whether human beings have any duty to charity, or economic assistance, to the needy. Locke’s works contain some strong statements… More

• The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke

  - C.B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962).
  This seminal work by political philosopher C.B. Macpherson was first published by the Clarendon Press in 1962, and remains of key importance to the study of liberal-democratic theory half-a-century later. In it, Macpherson argues that the chief difficulty of… More

Multimedia

• Steven Smith: Lectures on the Second Treatise

  - Steven Smith, "Introduction to Political Philosophy," Yale Open Courses, Autumn 2006.
  Professor Steven Smith’s lectures on Locke’s Second Treatise from Yale’s “Introduction to Political Philosophy,” available through Yale Open Courses. Autumn 2006. Constitutional Government: Locke, Second Treatise (1-5)… More