The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the 'Two Treatises of Government'

ISBN-10
0521074088
ISBN-13
9780521074087
Category
Political Science
Pages
290
Language
English
Published
1969-01
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Author
John Dunn

Description

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.

Other editions

Similar books