The political thought of John Locke

An historical account of the argument of the 'Two treatises of government'

Bibliographic Data

ID24246094
AuthorsJohn Dunn
Year1969
Pages290
Publication date1969-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
Reviewed byThe Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government”, by John Dunn, Caroline Robbins, 1971
VenueThe political thought of John Locke (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherCambridge U.P. (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/cbo9780511558436
ISBN9780511558436
Open LibraryOL5682933M
LanguageEN
Citations received228

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.

john Locke (1632-1704) · Philosophy, british · Political science · Political Science_Philosophy