Definition
John Locke was an English philosopher whose Two Treatises of Government appeared in 1689, the year after the Glorious Revolution. He argued that people are by nature free and equal, that they hold natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that government exists with their consent to protect those rights. If a government violated those rights, Locke wrote, the people could replace it. Educated colonists read his work, and Americans knew the idea of a social contract mostly through him.
Why it matters on the AP exam
Locke is the Enlightenment thinker most closely tied to the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's preamble follows Locke's argument from equal natural rights to government by consent to the people's right to alter or abolish a government that destroys those rights, though Jefferson wrote "the pursuit of Happiness" where Locke had named property. Questions give a passage from the Declaration or a colonial pamphlet and ask which Enlightenment thinker shaped it, or ask students to compare Locke's appeal to reason with the emotional revivals of the Great Awakening. A common mix-up credits Locke with the separation of powers, which the framers of the Constitution took mainly from Montesquieu.
Connections
- Natural rights: his list of life, liberty, and property
- Social contract: his argument that government rests on an agreement among the governed
- Consent of the governed: his principle that no one may be ruled without his own consent, which the Declaration repeats
- Declaration of Independence: Jefferson drew on his ideas when he drafted it in June 1776
Study it in context
Topic 3.4: Philosophical Foundations of the American Revolution Watch this part