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John Locke influenced the founding fathers of the United States of America in many ways. His ideas of natural rights and laws, the state of nature, owning property, needing consent, and  separation of powers were all seen in the important documents of the US. These include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights

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Men are equal and free and have the right to life, liberty, and property. These certain morals apply to all. He also believed that the ideas of natural law were known by reason for moral knowledge. The US Declaration of Independence takes Locke’s idea of natural rights into account, stating that the government is “instituted amount men” in order to protect these rights. This idea is also stated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

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The state of nature is the state of equality between all men, in which no one has power of one another. It is based on the concept of how lives would be without a sense of community. Locke says that the state of nature is in place with or without a form of political authority. “Men according to reason, without a common superior on Earth, to judge between them, is properly the state of nature.” (Two Treatises 2.19). The concept of a state of nature is central to all social contract theories and serves as the basis upon which government is built.

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Founding Principles
Click to read the words of James Madison and other Founders Click to view free lesson - Congress and the Constitution Download PDF for a glossary of terms relating to founding principles Listed below are the founding principles - the central values on which our country was founded. You will find suggested definitions of each principle.
Individual Liberty:

Each person is born with freedom from arbitrary or unjustified restraint

Federalism:

In this system of dual sovereignty, the people delegate certain powers to the national government, while the states and the people retain all other powers.

Limited Government:

The national government has only those powers granted in the Constitution. If a power is not listed, the national government is assumed not to have it.

Representative Government:

A republican system in which the people elect representatives to represent their interests as they make and carry out laws.

Private Property:

Individuals have the right to obtain and control possessions, as well as the fruits of their own labor.

"All Men Are Created Equal":

There is no natural class of rulers among people, and everyone is born with the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Separation of Powers/Checks and Balances:

The Constitution establishes a system of distinct powers to prevent an accumulation of power in one branch of government and to ensure that each branch can stop the others from growing too powerful.

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Founding Principles - Bill of Rights Institute

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Founding Principles Click to read the words of James Madison and other Founders Click to view free lesson - Congress and the Constitution Download PDF for a glossary of terms relating to founding principles Listed below are the founding principles - the central values on which our country was founded.

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The state of nature theorized by Locke sets certain restrictions on accumulation of property.  These restrictions include spoilage, sufficiency, and self work (Two Treatises). The possessive individuality of Locke’s beliefs on property does divide society into classes based on one’s ability to acquire property. Private property is discussed in the Bill of Rights, saying it is the people’s natural right to obtain individual possessions.

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The individuals in society are in a state of nature without legitimate authority and still have the ability to get past conflict. Men are in the natural state of independence and freedom, so a government cannot take away their natural rights. Political parties cannot be made unless consent is agreed upon towards a certain idea, and the natural rights are not being violated. The Unites States Bill of Rights touches on this topic, saying the power of the government comes from the people and popular sovereignty.

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Sea travel expanded the horizons of many European nations and created prosperity and the conditions for the Enlightenment. In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution.

Democracy was not created in a heartbeat. In a world where people were ruled by monarchs from above, the idea of self-government is entirely alien. Democracy takes practice and wisdom from experience.

The American colonies began developing a democratic tradition during their earliest stages of development. Over 150 years later, the colonists believed their experience was great enough to refuse to recognize the British king. The first decade was rocky. The American Revolution and the domestic instability that followed prompted a call for a new type of government with a constitution to guarantee liberty. The constitution drafted in the early days of the independent American republic has endured longer than any in human history.

Where did this democratic tradition truly begin? The ideas and practices that led to the development of the American democratic republic owe a debt to the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, the Protestant Reformation, and Gutenberg's printing press. But the Enlightenment of 17th-century Europe had the most immediate impact on the framers of the United States Constitution.

The Philosophes

Europeans of the 17th century no longer lived in the "darkness" of the Middle Ages. Ocean voyages had put them in touch with many world civilizations, and trade had created a prosperous middle class. The Protestant Reformation encouraged free thinkers to question the practices of the Catholic Church, and the printing press spread the new ideas relatively quickly and easily. The time was ripe for the philosophes , scholars who promoted democracy and justice through discussions of individual liberty and equality.

The ideas of 18th-century philosophes inspired the Founding Fathers to revolt against what they perceived as unfair British taxation. Washington Crossing the Delaware is one of the most famous depictions of the American Revolution.

One of the first philosophes was Thomas Hobbes, an Englishman who concluded in his famous book, Leviathan, that people are incapable of ruling themselves, primarily because humans are naturally self-centered and quarrelsome and need the iron fist of a strong leader. Later philosophes, like Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau were more optimistic about democracy. Their ideas encouraged the questioning of absolute monarchs, like the Bourbon family that ruled France. Montesquieu suggested a separation of powers into branches of government not unlike the system Americans would later adopt. They found eager students who later became the founders of the American government.

John Locke

The single most important influence that shaped the founding of the United States comes from John Locke, a 17th century Englishman who redefined the nature of government. Although he agreed with Hobbes regarding the self-interested nature of humans, he was much more optimistic about their ability to use reason to avoid tyranny. In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke identified the basis of a legitimate government. According to Locke, a ruler gains authority through the consent of the governed. The duty of that government is to protect the natural rights of the people, which Locke believed to include life, liberty, and property. If the government should fail to protect these rights, its citizens would have the right to overthrow that government. This idea deeply influenced Thomas Jefferson as he drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Important English Documents

Ironically, the English political system provided the grist for the revolt of its own American colonies. For many centuries English monarchs had allowed restrictions to be placed on their ultimate power. The Magna Carta, written in 1215, established the kernel of limited government, or the belief that the monarch's rule was not absolute. Although the document only forced King John to consult nobles before he made arbitrary decisions like passing taxes, the Magna Carta provided the basis for the later development of Parliament. Over the years, representative government led by a Prime Minister came to control and eventually replace the king as the real source of power in Britain.

The ideas of the French Enlightenment philosophes strongly influenced the American revolutionaries. French intellectuals met in salons like this one to exchange ideas and define their ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice.

The Petition of Right (1628) extended the rights of "commoners" to have a voice in the government. The English Bill of Rights (1688) guaranteed free elections and rights for citizens accused of crime. Although King George III still had some real power in 1776, Britain was already well along on the path of democracy by that time.

The foundations of American government lie squarely in the 17th and 18th century European Enlightenment. The American founders were well versed in the writings of the philosophes, whose ideas influenced the shaping of the new country. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, and others took the brave steps of creating a government based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, equality, and a new form of justice. More than 200 years later, that government is still intact.

Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes said that humans are savages who need a strong leader to tell them what to do. Hard to believe he was just a stuffed orange cat.

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Sea travel expanded the horizons of many European nations and created prosperity and the conditions for the Enlightenment. In turn, the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality, and justice helped to create the conditions for the American Revolution and the subsequent Constitution. Democracy was not created in a heartbeat.

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Locke states that a true government is based on a separation of powers throughout the party. The legislative power is though to be above all others with ultimate authority (Two Treatises 2.149). The executive power enforces the laws the government implicated, without taking away the natural rights given to people. His third power is the federative, allowing people to act intentionally for the state of nature. The separation of powers is seen in the United States of America’s Constitution. The Constitution separates the powers through the system of Checks and Balances. The branches are legislation, executive, and judicial. This is also seen in the Bill of Rights to prevent an accumulation of power in one branch.

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Table of Contents

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Two Treatises of Government, major statement of the political philosophy of the English philosopher John Locke, published in 1689 but substantially composed some years before then.

The work may be considered a response to the political situation as it existed in England at the time of the exclusion controversy-the debate over whether a law could be passed to forbid (exclude) the succession of James, the Roman Catholic brother of King Charles II (reigned 1660-85), to the English throne-though its message was of much more lasting significance. Locke strongly supported exclusion. In the preface to the work, composed at a later date, he makes clear that the arguments of the two treatises are continuous and that the whole constitutes a justification of the Glorious Revolution, which deposed James (who reigned, as James II, from 1685 to 1688) and brought the Protestant William III and Mary II to the throne.

It should be noted that Locke's political philosophy was guided by his deeply held religious commitments. Throughout his life he accepted the existence of a creating God and the notion that all humans are God's servants in virtue of that relationship. God created humans for a certain purpose, namely to live a life according to his laws and thus to inherit eternal salvation; most importantly for Locke's philosophy, God gave humans just those intellectual and other abilities necessary to achieve this end. Thus, humans, using the capacity of reason, are able to discover that God exists, to identify God's laws and the duties they entail, and to acquire sufficient knowledge to perform their duties and thereby to lead happy and successful lives. They can come to recognize that some actions, such as failing to care for one's offspring or to keep one's contracts, are morally reprehensible and contrary to natural law, which is identical to the law of God. Other specific moral laws can be discovered or known only through revelation.

The essentially Protestant Christian framework of Locke's philosophy meant that his attitude toward Roman Catholicism would always be hostile. He rejected the claim of papal infallibility (how could it ever be proved?), and he feared the political dimensions of Catholicism as a threat to English autonomy, especially after King Louis XIV of France in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had granted religious liberty to the Protestant Huguenots.

The first treatise

The first treatise was aimed squarely at the work of another 17th-century political theorist, Sir Robert Filmer, whose Patriarcha (1680, though probably written in the 1630s) defended the theory of the divine right of kings: the authority of monarchs is divinely sanctioned by their descent from Adam-according to the Bible, the first king and the father of humanity. Locke claims that Filmer's doctrine defies "common sense." The right to rule by descent from Adam's first grant could not be supported by any historical record or any other evidence, and any contract that God and Adam entered into would not be binding on remote descendants thousands of years later, even if a line of descent could be identified. His refutation was widely accepted as decisive, and in any event the theory of the divine right of kings ceased to be taken seriously in England after 1688.

The second treatise

Locke's importance as a political philosopher lies in the argument of the second treatise. He begins by defining political power as a

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right of making Laws with Penalties of Death, and consequently all less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws and in defence of the Common-wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only for the Publick Good.

Much of the remainder of the second treatise is a commentary on this paragraph.

The state of nature and the social contract

Locke's definition of political power has an immediate moral dimension. It is a "right" of making laws and enforcing them for "the public good." Power for Locke never simply means "capacity" but always "morally sanctioned capacity." Morality pervades the whole arrangement of society, and it is this fact, tautologically, that makes society legitimate. Locke's account of political society is based on a hypothetical consideration of the human condition before the beginning of communal life. In this " state of nature," humans are entirely free. But this freedom is not a state of complete license, because it is set within the bounds of the law of nature. It is a state of equality, which is itself a central element of Locke's account. In marked contrast to Filmer's world, there is no natural hierarchy among humans. Each person is naturally free and equal under the law of nature, subject only to the will of "the infinitely wise Maker." Each person, moreover, is required to enforce as well as to obey this law. It is this duty that gives to humans the right to punish offenders. But in such a state of nature, it is obvious that placing the right to punish in each person's hands may lead to injustice and violence. This can be remedied if humans enter into a contract with each other to recognize by common consent a civil government with the power to enforce the law of nature among the citizens of that state. Although any contract is legitimate as long as it does not infringe upon the law of nature, it often happens that a contract can be enforced only if there is some higher human authority to require compliance with it. It is a primary function of society to set up the framework in which legitimate contracts, freely entered into, may be enforced, a state of affairs much more difficult to guarantee in the state of nature and outside civil society.

Property

Before discussing the creation of political society in greater detail, Locke provides a lengthy account of his notion of property, which is of central importance to his political theory. Each person, according to Locke, has property in his or her own person-that is, each person literally owns his or her own body. Other people may not use a person's body for any purpose without that person's permission. But one can acquire property beyond one's own body through labour. By mixing one's labour with objects in the world, one acquires a right to the fruits of that work. If one's labour turns a barren field into crops or a pile of wood into a house, then the valuable product of that labour, the crops or the house, becomes one's property. Locke's view was a forerunner of the labour theory of value, which was expounded in different forms by the 19th-century economists David Ricardo and Karl Marx ( see also classical economics).

Clearly, all persons are entitled to as much of the product of their labour as they need to survive. But, according to Locke, in the state of nature one is not entitled to hoard surplus produce-one must share it with those less fortunate. God has "given the World to Men in common...to make use of to the best advantage of Life, and convenience." The introduction of money, while radically changing the economic base of society, was itself a contingent development, for money has no intrinsic value but depends for its utility only on convention. Locke's account of property and how it comes to be owned faces difficult problems. For example, it is far from clear how much labour is required to turn any given unowned object into a piece of private property. In the case of a piece of land, for example, is it sufficient merely to put a fence around it? Or must it be plowed as well? There is, nevertheless, something intuitively powerful in the notion that it is activity, or work, that grants one a property right in something.

Organization of government

Locke returns to political society in Chapter VIII of the second treatise. In the community created by the social contract, the will of the majority should prevail, subject to the law of nature. The legislative body is central, but it cannot create laws that violate the law of nature, because the enforcement of natural law regarding life, liberty, and property is the rationale of the whole system. Laws must apply equitably to all citizens and not favour particular sectional interests, and there should be a division of legislative, executive, and judicial powers ( see separation of powers). The legislature may, with the agreement of the majority, impose such taxes as are required to fulfill the ends of the state-including, of course, its defense. If the executive power fails to provide the conditions under which the people can enjoy their rights under natural law, then the people are entitled to remove it, by force if necessary. Thus, revolution, in extremis, is permissible-as Locke obviously thought it was in 1688.

The significance of Locke's vision of political society can scarcely be exaggerated. His integration of individualism within the framework of the law of nature and his account of the origins and limits of legitimate government authority inspired the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776) and the broad outlines of the system of government adopted in the U.S. Constitution. George Washington, the first president of the United States, once described Locke as "the greatest man who had ever lived." In France too, Lockean principles found clear expression in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and other justifications of the French Revolution of 1789.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Brian Duignan.

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Two Treatises of Government | Background, Content, & Facts

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Two Treatises of Government, major statement of the political philosophy of the English philosopher John Locke, published in 1689 but substantially composed some years before then.