Major Works

• A Letter Concerning Toleration

  - Recommended edition: Locke, John. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by James Tully. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983.
  Excerpt: “I think indeed there is no nation under heaven, in which so much has already been said upon that subject, as ours. But yet certainly there is no people that stand in more need of having something further both said and done amongst them, in… More

Other Works

• Two Tracts on Government

  - Recommended edition: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 3-78.
  Excerpt: I have chosen to draw a great part of my discourse from the supposition of the magistrate’s power, derived from, or conveyed to him by, the consent of the people, as a way best suited to those patrons of liberty, and most likely to obviate… More

Commentary

• Natural Right and History

  - Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953).
  In this classic work, Leo Strauss examines the problem of natural right and argues that there is a firm foundation in reality for the distinction between right and wrong in ethics and politics. On the centenary of Strauss’s birth, and the fiftieth… More

• The Political Thought of John Locke

  - John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
  This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke’s political thought. John Dunn restores Locke’s ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was… More

• “John Locke and the Theological Foundation of Liberal Toleration”

  - Joshua Mitchell, “John Locke and the Theological Foundation of Liberal Toleration,” Review of Politics 52 (1990), 64-83.
  Locke’s doctrine of toleration is best understood in the context of his larger argument about the political significance of Christ. Christ, Locke argues, separated the spiritual and political realm. His argument for separating the two realms, his basis… More

• An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts

  - James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1993).
  An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts brings together Professor Tully’s most important and innovative statements on Locke in a systematic treatment of the latter’s thought that is at once contextual and critical. Each essay has… More

• John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility

  - John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
  This book provides a major new historical account of the development of the political, religious, social and moral thought of the political theorist and philosopher John Locke. It offers reinterpretations of several of his most important works, particularly… 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

• God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought

  - Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.)
  Jeremy Waldron looks at the principle of equality in the thought of John Locke, and the extent to which this is grounded in Christian principles. Throughout the text, Waldron discusses contemporary approaches to equality and rival interpretations of Locke,… More

• The Lockean Commonwealth

  - Ross Corbett, The Lockean Commonwealth (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009).
  The tension between executive prerogative in times of emergency and the importance of maintaining and preserving the rule of law has been a perennial concern for modern democratic states. The Lockean Commonwealth reappraises John Locke’s contribution to… More