John Locke (1632-1704) is perhaps the greatest philosopher in the English language. A political activist in a revolutionary age, Locke's prolific correspondence opens up the cultural, social, intellectual, and political worlds of the later Stuart era. Spanning half a century, the letters trace the transition from Puritanism to the Enlightenment. A man of insatiable curiosity, Locke's letters encompass science (his correspondents include Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle), education, travel, religion, and the birth of the British empire.

John Locke (1632-1704) was a prolific correspondent and left behind him over 3,600 letters, a collection almost unmatched in pre-modern times. A man of insatiable curiosity and wide social connections, his letters open up the cultural, social, intellectual, and political worlds of the later Stuart age. Spanning half a century, they mark the transition from the era of revolutionary Puritanism to the dawn of the Enlightenment. Locke is chiefly known as a philosopher, a theorist of empiricism in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a theorist of liberalism in his Two Treatises of...

John Locke laid the groundwork of modern liberalism. He argued that political societies exist to defend the lives, liberties and properties of their citizens, and that no government has any authority except by the consent of the people. When rulers became tyrants and act against the common good, then the people have the right of revolution against them. Writing against the backdrop of Charles II's savage purge of the Whig movement, Locke set out to attack fabric of the divine right of rulers. The rights of property- owners, of Native Americans, and of women and children, the need for economic...

This major work of academic reference provides a comprehensive overview of the development of western political thought during the European enlightenment. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, this Cambridge History is the latest in a sequence of volumes that is now firmly established as the principal reference source for the history of political thought. Every major theme in eighteenth-century political thought is covered in a series of essays at once scholarly and accessible, and the essays are complemented by extensive guides for further reading, and brief...

The companion volume to the highly successful Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, this book presents a comprehensive account of the development of European political thinking through the Renaissance and the Reformation to the "scientific revolution" and political upheavals of the seventeenth century. Recent decades have seen intensive historical investigation and reappraisal in this field. Many established perspectives have changed; and while it would still be generally accepted that something distinctly "modern" took shape in the political thought of the sixteenth and...

This book brings together a comprehensive collection of the writings of one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. Along with five of John Locke's major essays, seventy shorter essays are included that stand outside the canonical works that Locke published during his lifetime. For the first time students will be able to fully explore the evolution of Locke's ideas concerning the philosophical foundations of morality and sociability, the boundary of church and state, the shaping of constitutions, and the conduct of government and public policy.

'Man being born...to perfect freedom...hath by nature a power...to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate.'
Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1689) is one of the great classics of political philosophy, widely regarded as the foundational text of modern liberalism. In it Locke insists on majority rule, and regards no government as legitimate unless it has the consent of the people. He sets aside people's ethnicities, religions, and cultures and envisages political societies which command our assent because they meet our elemental needs...

'An exceptionally significant monograph, and without doubt one of the most important to appear in the field of Restoration history in the last twenty years. Mark Goldie has done more than anyone else to illuminate the political and religious assumptions of late seventeenth-century Englishmen.' Dr Grant Tapsell, University of Oxford. Roger Morrice and the Puritan Whigs explains a movement, illuminates the world of its emblematic representative, and explores one of the most remarkable documents of the seventeenth century. Morrice's Entring Book was supremely well-informed, passionately...

A comprehensive overview of the development of political thought during the European Enlightenment.