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¶ … John Locke are found in the "Declaration of Independence"?
Three values John Locke discussed in his 1690 "Two Treatises of Government" are echoed in the wording of the "Declaration of Independence" of the American colonies, when they wrote their famous letter to George III of England. These were the rights of all human beings to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. Locke stated that no human being, even when he or she agreed to the social contract implicit in the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, could be deprived of these three rights. Such rights were eternally part of the human condition. The temporary forfeiture of these rights to a sovereign government was only done by the voluntary will of the people of a nation -- a will that could be withdrawn.
Locke argued that to deprive a human being of their right to life was wrong. For a king to conscript a human being into involuntary servitude in His Majesty's Navy, or to force American colonists to unwillingly house troops in their homes deprived human beings of their lives and livelihoods. Similarly, to tax people unjustly, without representation, was to take away their means to life, namely their income.
Liberty, argued the American colonists, was additional being denied to the American people by the refusal of the king to give them...
To have to obey without a voice in the legislature of the government that was compelling the colonists to obey the king denied the colonists their liberty.
The last value discussed by Locke, the right to property, is reconfigured as the right to happiness in the Declaration of Independence. Why is this so? Happiness is not simply the right of ownership, but the right of self-determination, the right to earn money by trade, as well as security in the already delineated rights of liberty and life. Although the sovereign was not dwelling upon the territory or property of the colonists, he was impinging upon their happiness -- hence, the final words of the Declaration's echoing of Locke.
Locke's fundamental contention was that all rulers derived their power only from the consent of the people. The Declaration withdrew that consent, arguing that Britain had violated the colonist's civil and natural laws to life, liberty, and happiness. Thus, as the king's power had become unrepresentative, tyrannical and unjust, the colonies could revolt
Second Essay
How did slavery as discussed by Locke differ from the way it was practiced in the United States?
The philosophical definition of slavery, the methods by which it was practiced,…
These rights are voluntarily given by the people to the government through a 'social contract' and governments exist only to protect such rights. How Far is Locke's "Theory of Property" reflected in the U.S. Declaration of Independence? The Declaration of Independence," a formal announcement of independence by the American colonists from British rule in the summer of 1776, is widely believed to be based on John Locke's theories of natural and
Locke's version of the social contract is essentially a justification for the wealthy to assert political control over everyone else. Locke's arguments justifying government were liberal, even radical for their time. The popular view was that kings ruled by mandate from God, and were not subject to the consent of the people. Locke's Two Treatises of Government were written during the exclusion crisis, and supported the Whig position that the
John LockeLocke believed in the law of liberty and held that an ethical system for society should strive to maintain the law of liberty. He wrote in his Second Treatise that a society had a right to overthrow a government if that government did not serve the cause of liberty: �For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where there is no law��(p.
..you will find his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, but demand is insufficient for a postcard to be on sale" (Goldie, 2004). But today Locke's writings are used by a diverse assortment of organizations to bolster or justify their positions. The National Rifle Association (NRA) (www.nra.org) uses the 137th paragraph of Locke's Second Treatise on Government as an authoritative source to bolster the NRA's position on the right to
Second Treatise of Government," by John Locke is a revolutionary philosophical work that directly opposed the idea of absolutism. Absolutism held that the best form of government was autocratic, and was based on both the belief in the Divine Right of Kings and the theory of natural law, as espoused by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. In the context of the absolutism of Louis XIV, and the political events surrounding Oliver
This body then has the right and duty, especially if elected to represent to build the laws and enforce the judgment of those laws, as a reflection of the will of the consensus. Locke, having developed a keen sense of a rather radical sense of the rights of the individual and the responsibility of the civil government began his work with the development of what it is that constructs the