The 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.