1. John Locke(1632-1704) is generally acknowledged to be the first thinker to gather together into a seemingly coherent whole most of the leading themes of liberalism. Especially if one dwells on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke's epist...
1. John Locke(1632-1704) is generally acknowledged to be the first thinker to gather together into a seemingly coherent whole most of the leading themes of liberalism. Especially if one dwells on the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke's epistemological masterpiece, one can detect numerous resemblances to T. Hobbes's approach.
2. According to Locke, civil liberty, or the liberty of man in society, consists in being under no legislative power, but that established, by consent, in the commonwealth; nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.
3. According to Locke, the original state of nature was one in which peace and reason prevailed, unlike Hobbes's state of war. It was not lawless, since men lived under natural law, which Locke defined as a body of rules by reason, for the guidance of men in their natural condition. Under the law of nature all men are equal and possessed equal natural rights. Locke defined these as the rights to life, liberty, and property.
4. Locke believed that the right of property included the right of a man to his person and that this was the basis of his rights of life and liberty. private property came into existence through the labor a man incorporated into some object. Locke's labor theory of value advanced the cause of capitalism by justifying free enterprise and the profit system.
5. Locke emphasized the social contract among people by which the state was formed, like Hobbes. He added definiteness to the ideas of natural rights, seperation of powers, popular control, and the right of resistance. While Hobbes aimed to make authority absolute, Locke wished to establish its limitations.