Political Thought of John Locke

The Political Thought of John Locke: New Perspectives offers the most comprehensive collective overview of Locke's political thought in over fifty years. It brings together research essays by political theorists, historians of political thought, and intellectual historians to survey Locke's political writings in their immediate historical and intellectual contexts and in the longer perspective of the history of their reception up to the present. Locke's Two Treatises of Government is now one of the most widely taught texts in the canon of political theory. Discussions of this work also provide important touchstones for methodological discussions in multiple disciplines, beginning with John Dunn's germinal monograph, The Political Thought of John Locke (1969). This volume traces the long shadow of Dunn's book, while in dialogue with other interventions since. The chapters shed fresh light not only on Locke's Two Treatises (its publication, its international dimensions, and its resistance theory, for example) but also his writings on toleration, on his relationship with contemporary theology and with Thomas Hobbes, and on his contributions to the histories of liberalism, colonialism, and post-colonial theory. Taken together, they offer a timely and much-needed opportunity for conversation among historical, critical, and theoretical approaches to Locke's thought as well as stimulating resources for scholars, teachers, and advanced students concerned with Locke's political thought and with political theory more broadly.

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual and international history, and an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. A prize-winning writer and teacher, he is the author or editor of eighteen books, among them The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2000), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2016), and Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017). He is completing an edition of John Locke's colonial writings for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke. Teresa M. Bejan is Professor of Political Theory and a Fellow of Oriel College at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Harvard, 2017) and First Among Equals: Ideas of Equality and the Demand for Standing (Harvard, forthcoming), as well as many peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on themes in political theory and early modern intellectual history. She is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Politics (2022). Currently, she is editing the Clarendon Edition of Locke's Four Letters on Toleration. Felix Waldmann is Fellow, Tutor, and Director of Studies, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He is editing Two Treatises of Government for the Clarendon Edition of the works of John Locke and he is the author of several articles on John Locke's life and writings.