Locke publishes Two Treatises of Government
Locke's Two Treatises, published anonymously in 1689 just after the Glorious Revolution, argued the opposite of Hobbes on the crucial question: the social contract does not surrender individual rights permanently. Governments exist to protect life, liberty, and property, and a government that fails this duty can be justly dissolved by its subjects. Where Hobbes used the contract to justify absolute monarchy, Locke used it to justify the right of revolution. Every major revolutionary document of the next century — American and French — quotes him nearly verbatim.
Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence borrows Locke's phrasing so closely that it's occasionally quoted as if Locke had written it directly. 'Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' is a tweak of Locke's 'life, liberty, and property.'
05 · Social Contract
In roughly two centuries, European philosophers worked out a new account of where authority came from. Hobbes said the sovereign's power was granted by a tacit contract individuals signed to escape the war of all against all. Locke said the contract was conditional and revocable, and that the governed retained the right to dissolve any government that broke its terms. Rousseau said legitimate authority was the general will of the people themselves, not any individual monarch. Each argument sharpened the previous one. By 1789 the conclusions had been put on parchment and fired out of muskets on two continents.
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