The Two Treatises of Civil Government was a work of political philosophy published in 1690 by John Locke. The two component treatises are often discussed as separate works. The First Treatise was an extended attack on Sir Robert Filmer. Political philosophy is the study of the fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, property, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should... Events Giovanni Domenico Cassini observes differential rotation within Jupiters atmosphere. ... John Locke John Locke (August 29, 1632–October 28, 1704) was a 17th century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. ... A treatise is a systematic analysis of a certain subject. ...

In The Second Treatise of Civil Government (sometimes The Second Treatise on Civil Government) Locke lays out his philosophy for the creation and mechanics of civil society. A theory of property is central to Locke's understanding of the role of civil government, a main function of which is to protect this property. Locke is concerned with developing a moral justification for individual right to property in the absence of the consent of the people. Philosophy (from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom), as a practice, aims at some kind of understanding, knowledge or wisdom about fundamental matters such as reality, knowledge, meaning, value, being and truth. ... Civil society or civil institutions refers to the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations or institutions which form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force backed structures of a state (regardless of that states political system). ... This page deals with property as ownership rights. ...

Locke's attempt to develop a moral justification for individual ownership of property is in part a reaction to Filmer, who had argued that "the only way out of original communism was to assume that in some way or other every individual in the world had consented to every act of property acquisition". Locke begins by agreeing with Fillmer. He refers to scripture to show that "God as King David says, Psal. CXV. Xvj. Has given the Earth to the Children of Men, given it to Mankind in common". Locke accepts the premise that men share a right over the world. The problem then is to show that "Men might come to have property ... without any express Compact of all the Commoners." Locke's answer is that "every Man has a Property in his own Person" and "The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his hands, we may say, are properly his" (287-288). For Locke, a man may come to be morally justified in his individual ownership of property when "he has mixed his Labour" (288) with it.

It is clear to Locke that individual ownership of property is morally justifiable without the consent of the people. He also argues that it is practical, saying that if common consent were necessary, "Children or Servants could not cut the Meat which their Father and Master had provided for them in common, without assigning every one his peculiar part" (289). Therefore, individual ownership of property is established as both morally justifiable and practical.

External links

• etext of the Second Treatise (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/7370) (Project Gutenberg)
• Full text of the Second Treatise (http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtreat.htm)
• Sparknotes on the Second Treatise (http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/locke/)