Second Treatise of Government
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
Second Treatise of Government
| Full title | Two Treatises of Government, Book II: An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government |
|---|---|
| Author | John Locke |
| Published | 1689 |
| Pages | 110 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Locke’s argument that legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed and exists to preserve life, liberty and property — property derived from labour, government as the impartial judge people leave the state of nature to secure, and a people’s right to dissolve a government that breaks its trust. The most direct philosophical source for the Declaration of Independence. |
Where I heard about it
- Brendan McCord — marked with a ☑️ on his Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in Renaissance and Enlightenment Political Thought, directly after Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hobbes’s On the Citizen — the sequence that moves from power as such, to the sovereign as the answer to disorder, to consent and property as the answer to the sovereign, March 2026. The list gives no legend for the ☑️. Full list: The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.
Connections
- John Locke — the author.
- Liberalism — the tradition this book largely founds.
- Founding Fathers — the readers who carried the argument into the American founding documents.
- The Prince — the entry immediately before it in the same section of McCord’s list.
- Government — the institution whose legitimacy the book is about.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.