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

• Some Thoughts Concerning Education

  - Recommended edition: Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).
  Excerpt: I myself have been consulted of late by so many, who profess themselves at a loss how to breed their children; and the early corruption of youth is now become so general a complaint; that he cannot be thought wholly impertinent, who brings the… More

Other Works

• Of the Conduct of the Understanding

  - Recommended edition: Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996).
  Excerpt: The last resort a man has recourse to, in the conduct of himself, is his understanding: for though we distinguish the faculties of the mind, and give the supreme command to the will, as to an agent; yet the truth is, the man, who is the agent,… 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

• “Constitutional Government: The Soul of Modern Democracy”

  - Harvey Mansfield, "Constitutional Government: The Soul of Modern Democracy," The Public Interest 86 (1987), 53-64.
  Excerpt: How did it come about that virtue is not required but somehow expected under our Constitution? To explain our embarrassment with the notion of “virtue,” we must see why modern democracy is unhappy with the word “soul.” For… More

• John Locke’s Liberalism

  - Ruth Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
  In this work, Ruth W. Grant presents a new approach to John Locke’s familiar works. Taking the unusual step of relating Locke’s Two Treatises to his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Grant establishes the unity and coherence of… More

• “John Locke”

  - Robert Goldwin, "John Locke" in History of Political Philosophy, eds. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
  Excerpt: The theme of human freedom characterizes those of Locke’s works which are most important for an understanding of his political thought: in A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), he wrote of religious freedom; in the Two Treatises of Government… More

• Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power, The Free Press, 1989; paperback edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. The Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 1993)
  From the publisher: This survey of Western political thought ranges from Aristotle to “The Federalist Papers”, showing how the doctrine of executive power arose and how it has developed to the present day. Although there were various… More

• The Spirit of Modern Republicanism

  - Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
  The Spirit of Modern Republicanism sets forth a radical reinterpretation of the foundations on which the American regime was constructed. Thomas L. Pangle argues that the Founders had a dramatically new vision of civic virtue, religious faith, and… More

• The Liberal Tradition in America

  - Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Mariner Books, 1991).
  Hartz’s influential interpretation of american political thought since the Revolution. He contends that America gave rise to a new concept of a liberal society, a “liberal tradition” that has been central to our experience of events both at home and… 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

• America’s Constitutional Soul

  - Harvey Mansfield, America's Constitutional Soul (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).
  Excerpt: The institutional political science of our day, with its studies of constituted groups and accidental eddies of interaction in politics, is part of, and heir to, a grand movement in modern political science dating from Hobbes and Locke of which it… 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

• “John Locke and the Foundations of Toleration”

  - Nathan Tarcov, "John Locke and the Foundations of Toleration," in Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration, ed. Alan Levine (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 1999).
  Excerpt: “There is another sense in which Locke is an advocate for more than toleration… If toleration is taken, as it is historically with reference to the controversies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as meaning specifically… More

• Locke’s Education for Liberty by Nathan Tarcov

  - Nathan Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
  Locke’s Education for Liberty presents an analysis of the crucial but often underestimated place of education and the family within Lockean liberalism. Nathan Tarcov shows that Locke’s neglected work Some Thoughts Concerning Education compares… More

• John Locke: Problems and Perspectives

  - John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Yolton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
  Originally published in 1969, the impetus for this collection came from a conference on the Thought of John Locke held at York University, Toronto in 1966. Written in the co-operative spirit of the conference, the essays collected here were intended to… More

• Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought

  - Scott Yenor, Family Politics: The Idea of Marriage in Modern Political Thought, Baylor University Press, 2012.
  From the publisher: With crisp prose and intellectual fairness, Family Politics traces the treatment of the family in the philosophies of leading political thinkers of the modern world. What is family? What is marriage? In an effort to address contemporary… More