Portal:Politics/Selected article/2006, week 47

The Two Treatises of Government (or Two Treatises of Government: In the Former, The False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer, And His Followers, are Detected and Overthrown. The Latter is an Essay concerning The True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government) is a work of political philosophy anonymously published in 1689 by John Locke. The two component treatises are often discussed as separate works, though Locke himself never published them separately. The Second Treatise is often cited as a manifesto for liberal democracy and capitalism, and so has been alternately praised and vilified, depending on one's point of view. Locke claims in the Preface to the work that its purpose is to justify William of Orange's ascension to the throne of England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, though recent scholarship has suggested that the bulk of the writing was completed between 1679-1682. That he would write a defense of revolution during the Exclusion Crisis, i.e., during the reign of Charles II, rather than in anticipation of the imminent ouster of James II, serves to cast the work in a very radical light. Locke further edited the Treatises before publication.