John Locke

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This article is part of the Basic Course on Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics-> Module 2: Libertarianism and its ethical foundations

Last updated: 2025-11-10

Introduction

John Locke is often called the father of classical libertarianism, but that is not so; in reality he was its precursor, the pioneer of libertarianism.

Locke was the one who gave a philosophical and ethical foundation (incomplete and in places contradictory) to the nascent liberal thought of the 17th century, which then over time evolved with other philosophers to reach the current idea of libertarianism. In a context where absolute monarchy and the idea of the divine power of the king still dominated, he proposed that political authority arises from the consent of the governed, not from God or from tradition. He introduced key concepts such as:

Natural right to life, liberty, and property. (It is known that Locke read authors of The School of Salamanca)
Social contract: the State exists to protect those rights, not to violate them.
Limitation of power and the possibility of resistance against the tyrant.

That gave libertarianism an ethical and philosophical north, a rational and moral justification of individual liberty. We continue with the details of his life.

Personal life

Life and formation

Childhood and formation (1632–1656)

Birth: 29 August 1632 in Wrington, Somerset (England), into a middle-class Puritan family.
Education: He studied at Westminster School and later at Christ Church, Oxford (1652). There he was trained in Aristotelian logic, but took more interest in medicine, experimental chemistry, and the ideas of Descartes.
Early influences: He worked as a tutor and physician; he met Robert Boyle (pioneer of modern chemistry) and became involved in scientific experiments.
He trained as a physician and worked as assistant to the physician Thomas Sydenham, which reinforced his vision centered on experience and observation.

Political career and exile (1660–1689)

Politics: His life unfolded during a very turbulent period in English history, marked by the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution.
Service to Lord Ashley (later Earl of Shaftesbury): From 1667 he was secretary, physician, and advisor to this Whig politician. This introduced him to English politics, associating him with Shaftesbury.
Exile in Holland (1683–1689): After Shaftesbury’s fall and accusations of treason against King Charles II, Locke fled to the Netherlands. There he wrote much of his main works and associated with liberal circles.

What inspired his ideas?

Area / Main idea	Author or current that influenced Locke	How it shows in his work
Theory of natural right	Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) (De iure belli ac pacis, 1625) and Samuel von Pufendorf (1632–1694) (De iure naturae et gentium, 1672)	He takes the idea of a rational and universal natural law, prior to the State and accessible by reason. Locke simplifies it and makes it more secular.
Contractualism and state of nature	Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) – though he rejects him on almost everything	He uses the same structure (state of nature + contract), but inverts the result: instead of absolutism, he arrives at limited government and inalienable rights.
Religious toleration	Socinians (Polish Unitarians), Dutch Arminians, and Anglican “latitudinarians”	A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689): the State must not impose beliefs; faith is a private matter.
Church–State separation and freedom of conscience	Dutch Remonstrants (especially Philip van Limborch, personal friend of Locke)	Direct influence during his exile in Holland (1683–1688).
Philosophical empiricism	Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and the Royal Society (English experimentalism)	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690): the mind is a “tabula rasa”; all knowledge comes from sensible experience.
Property as a natural right	Scholastic tradition (Thomas Aquinas → labor as title to property) + Grotius	Second Treatise, ch. V: one’s own labor mixes one’s person with things and generates legitimate property.
Separation of powers (embryonic)	James Harrington (The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656) and English Commonwealth republicans	Although he does not develop the classic tripartite scheme, he already distinguishes legislative and executive, and speaks of the “federative power.”
Direct political experience	English Revolution (1640–1660), exile in Holland, Glorious Revolution (1688), and Shaftesbury’s circle	The Two Treatises are a philosophical justification of the Glorious Revolution and of the new parliamentary regime.
Classical readings	Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch	Stoic language of “reason,” “natural law,” and civic virtue.
Critique of innatism	Reaction against Descartes and the Cambridge Platonists (Herbert of Cherbury, Lord Herbert)	Essay: denies innate ideas and innate practical principles.

Strongest influences

Hugo Grotius and Pufendorf → framework of modern natural right.
Thomas Hobbes → as a “useful adversary” (contractual structure that Locke corrects).
English scientific empiricism (Boyle, Sydenham, Royal Society).
Dutch theologians and jurists during his exile (toleration and moderate republicanism).
English political experience itself 1680–1689 (defense of the Whig and parliamentary regime).

In summary: Locke is the great synthesizer who takes the secularized natural right of the Continentals, soaks it in English empiricism, corrects it against Thomas Hobbes, and applies it to justify limited constitutional government. That is why he is considered the “father of classical libertarianism.”

Influences of the English Civil War period

For more detail on the period, read → The Civil War and the Glorious Revolution (1642–1689)

Locke was a child/adolescent during the revolution of 1640 (he was only 8 years old when it began).
His father was a lawyer who fought as a captain of cavalry in the Parliamentary army against the King. Locke grew up in an environment where absolute authority was questioned, which shaped his natural-law thought.
Locke lived through the chaos and violence of Cromwell’s dictatorship and the later monarchical Restoration. This led him to write his most famous works to justify why the people have the right to rebel against a tyrant.
The right of revolution: Locke argued that if a ruler breaks the social contract and violates natural rights (life, liberty, and property), the people have the “divine” right (based on natural reason) to overthrow him.

Main Works

Locke’s fame rests on his role as precursor of Empiricism and of Classical Libertarianism.

Empiricism: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
- His masterwork; it defends that the human mind at birth is a “Tabula Rasa” (a blank slate). All knowledge comes from experience, obtained through sensation and reflection. With this, he sought to refute the rationalist idea of innate ideas (as in Descartes).
Political Libertarianism: In his Two Treatises of Government (1689), he laid the foundations of libertarianism:
- Natural Rights: He held that people have inalienable rights given by nature: life, liberty, and property.
- Social Contract: Legitimate government arises from the consent of the governed and its sole end is to protect those natural rights.
- Separation of Powers: He defended the need to separate the powers of government (mainly the legislative and the executive) to avoid despotism.
- He rejects the divine right of kings (ideas more associated with the Catholic Church).
- If the government violates natural rights (life, liberty, property), the people have the right to rebel.
- He influenced directly the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689–1692): Defends religious liberty, though with limits (excludes atheists and Catholics in some cases).

What did John Locke think about the state?

Let us see what John Locke thought about the state (or “commonwealth,” as he calls it), based mainly on his key work: Two Treatises of Government (1689), especially the Second Treatise.

1. The state of nature

Locke starts from a hypothetical state of nature before any organized government:

Men are free and equal by nature.
All are governed by the law of nature (discovered by reason), which commands the preservation of one’s own and others’ life, liberty, and property.
There are inalienable natural rights: life, liberty, and property (the last is central in Locke).
In this state there is general peace, but also inconveniences: there is no impartial judge nor a common power to enforce the law of nature, which can lead to conflicts (though Locke is much more optimistic than Thomas Hobbes: it is not a “war of all against all”).

To overcome those inconveniences, men freely consent to form a political society through a social contract:

They do not cede all their rights (as in Thomas Hobbes), but only what is necessary for the government to better protect their natural rights.
The main purpose of the state is to protect the life, liberty, and property of citizens.
The state arises from a voluntary pact among equal individuals; it is not an absolute grant to the sovereign.

3. Legitimate government

The power of the state is fiduciary: rulers are trustees who act in the name of the people. If they abuse power, they break the contract.
Locke defends a limited government with separation of powers (though not as detailed as Montesquieu’s):
Legislative power: supreme, makes the laws.
Executive power: applies the laws.
Federative power: foreign relations.
He prefers constitutional monarchy or a mixed government (with monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements), but what matters is that it be subject to the law and respect natural rights.

4. The right of resistance or revolution

One of Locke’s most revolutionary points: - If the government systematically violates natural rights (tyranny), the people have the right to resist and even to overthrow it. - This “appeal to heaven” justifies armed resistance as a last resort. - This idea influenced directly the United States Declaration of Independence (1776).

Summary of the Lockean vision of the state in key points

Aspect	Locke’s thought
Origin of the state	Voluntary social contract to overcome inconveniences of the state of nature
Main purpose	Protect life, liberty, and property
Nature of power	Fiduciary and limited; rulers are accountable to the people
Preferred form of government	Constitutional government with separation of powers; legislative supreme
Legitimacy	Depends on the consent of the people and respect for natural rights
When the State loses legitimacy	If it becomes tyrannical → right of resistance/revolution of the people

In contrast with Hobbes (absolute state to avoid chaos) and with Rousseau (general will and more direct democracy), Locke is the father of classical libertarianism: the State should be minimal in its intervention, but strong in protecting individual liberties and private property.

What did Locke think about natural law?

To understand John Locke as a natural-law thinker, we must place him in the transition between medieval thought and modernity. Locke is considered the father of rationalist natural law. In his work Second Treatise of Government, he argues that the origin of law is not the will of the monarch, but human nature itself and reason.

1. The State of Nature and Natural Law

Unlike other thinkers who saw the “state of nature” as chaos, Locke holds that, even before governments and written laws existed, human beings were already subject to a Law of Nature. This law is:

Universal: It applies to all men equally.
Rational: It can be discovered through human reason, without need of direct divine revelation.
Eternal: It does not change according to the ruler’s whim.

2. Inalienable Natural Rights

Locke affirms that from natural law flow certain rights that man possesses by the simple fact of being born. These rights are prior to the State and no sovereign can legitimately take them away:

Life: The right to self-preservation.
Liberty: The right not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another.
Property: The right to possess the fruits of one’s own labor.

For Locke, the point of creating a government (the social contract) is not to cede all our rights to the king, but to better protect those natural rights. The State is only legitimate if it acts as an impartial judge that guarantees life, liberty, and property.

4. The Right of Resistance (The limit to power)

This is the point where his natural law challenges directly the idea of the “King chosen by God.” Locke holds that:

If a ruler violates natural law and attacks the rights of citizens, he becomes a tyrant.
By violating the superior law (the natural one), the ruler loses his authority.
The people then have the Right of Resistance or rebellion, because the law of nature is superior to the law of the king.

“Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” — John Locke.

Philosophical critiques

Problem of the “tabula rasa”

Locke held that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa and all knowledge comes from experience.

Rationalist philosophers (such as Leibniz) said there are ideas or mental structures prior to experience.
Today the neurosciences and evolutionary psychology also point to innate predispositions and structures.

Political critiques

His theory of property

Locke defended that property arises when someone mixes their labor with nature. The text that received the most criticism is: ...Uncultivated land is common… he who cultivates it, owns it...

Critiques:

Critic	Argument	Possible response
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Property is the origin of inequality: “The first man who fenced a piece of land…”	Locke: Inequality is natural if it comes from labor; money amplifies it, but it is consensual.
Karl Marx	The labor theory justifies exploitation: the worker does not receive the full value of his labor. - Property is theft (Proudhon).	Locke does not contemplate industrial capitalism; his model is artisanal.
Colonial critiques (C. B. Macpherson, indigenists)	Locke justified colonization (“unworked” land = empty).	Locke says: “uncultivated land = common,” but ignored indigenous agriculture.

Limited religious toleration

Locke defended toleration… except for:

Atheists (he believed they would not keep promises without fear of God)
Catholics (he feared loyalty to the Pope instead of the English State)

He is criticized for not being fully universalist.

Personal and moral critiques of John Locke

Limitations and contradictions: Liberty for all?

Locke’s ideas were not perfect and reflected the limitations of his era (17th century). He himself could not (or did not want to) resolve inconsistencies, and here is where the critique that his libertarianism was selective comes in:

Hypocrisy regarding slavery: In the 17th century, everyone (even republicans) accepted prisoners of war as slaves. Locke invested in the Royal African Company, which trafficked slaves (as prisoners of war), and helped draft the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669), which explicitly allowed slavery. In his Second Treatise, he justifies slavery as the result of a “just war,” where captives lose their liberty. This clashes with his defense of natural liberty, since it implies that not all humans deserve the same rights —for example, enslaved Africans did not enter his vision of “free men.” Critics on the left, as in articles in Jacobin, accuse him of hypocrisy, arguing that his philosophy served to justify colonialism and private property at others’ expense.
Exclusions in toleration and rights: His religious toleration did not include everyone; it excluded atheists (for not believing in God, they were not trustworthy) and Catholics (for loyalty to the Pope). Moreover, his emphasis on property as a natural right was tied to labor, which marginalized indigenous peoples or groups without “productive property” in European terms.
Modern critiques: Some historians argue that the label “father of liberalism” was invented by Marxist or conservative critics to attack libertarianism in general, highlighting its failings. Others, from the right, see his libertarianism as a solvent of traditions and religious values. And in recent debates (even in 2025), the tension between public security and individual liberty in his thought is discussed.

Locke originated many liberal ideas, but his vision was elitist and Eurocentric, limited by his historical context. He did not consistently extend liberty to slaves, women (in full equality), or non-Christians. This was “polished” by later thinkers: Adam Smith and David Hume in economics, John Stuart Mill in utilitarianism and broader individual rights, and abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, who used Lockean principles to combat slavery. Modern libertarianism (or “classical” in its pure form) evolved toward a universality that Locke did not reach.

Why does he remain important?

Despite the critiques, Locke remains central because:

He founded classical libertarianism
He influenced modern constitutions (U.S., United Kingdom)
He contributed to empiricism, the theory of knowledge, and education

His work is a starting point and fixed the direction for liberal ideas.

Some phrases of John Locke from his books

Phrase	Comments
...Men are born free, equal, and independent by nature....”
...Where there is no law, there is no liberty.....”
...The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.....”
...Government has no other end but the preservation of property....”	(Two Treatises of Government, Second Treatise, Ch. IX)
...Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself....”
...All mankind... being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions...”
...True religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind; it cannot be compelled by force....”
...When legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people....”	(Civil Government, ch. XIX, §222.)

Basic Course on Libertarianism and the Austrian School of Economics

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