Extract

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it.

John Locke published the Two Treatises of Government anonymously in 1689, timed to justify the Glorious Revolution that had just deposed James II, though the work had been largely composed years earlier. The First Treatise demolished Sir Robert Filmer's argument for the divine right of kings; the Second laid the philosophical foundation for modern liberal democracy. Government, Locke argued, exists only by the consent of the governed, to protect natural rights — life, liberty, and property — and when it fails, the people have not merely a right but a duty to replace it. The prose is measured, the logic relentless, and the consequences immeasurable: Jefferson drew directly on Locke when drafting the Declaration of Independence, and every constitutional democracy on earth bears his fingerprints. Placed in the canon between Rousseau's Social Contract and de Beauvoir's Second Sex, the Treatises mark the beginning of a conversation about who gets to be included in 'the people' — a question Locke raised but could not finish answering.