The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the Two Treatises of Government

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 intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke’s thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke’s thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and Marxist interpretations of Locke’s politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian.

Preface; Part I: 1. Introduction: John Locke in history: the problems; 2. The developing mind; 3. The essays on the law of nature; 4. The essay on toleration; Part II: 5. The Two Treatises and exclusion; 6. Sir Robert Filmer; 7. Locke and Hobbes; Part III: 8. The premises of the argument; 9. The state of nature; 10. The creation of the legitimate policy; 11. Prerogative; 12. Public good and reason of state; 13. The conditions for legitimate resistance; 14. The law of nature; Part IV: 15. The coherence of a mind 1; 16. The coherence of a mind 2; 17. The coherence of a mind 3; Part V: 18. The calling: tradition and change; 19. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.