John Locke's Influence On The United States

His theory of government by the consent of the governed as a means to protect"Life, liberty and estate" deeply influenced the United States' founding documents. His political theory of government by the consent of the governed as a means to protect "Life, liberty and estate" deeply influenced the United States' founding documents. Between 1652 and 1667, John Locke was a student and then lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, where he focused on the standard curriculum of logic, metaphysics and classics. In 1666 Locke met the parliamentarian Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the first Earl of Shaftesbury. The two struck up a friendship that blossomed into full patronage, and a year later Locke was appointed physician to Shaftesbury's household. For the next two
The "Two Treatises of Government" offered political theories developed and refined by Locke during his years at Shaftesbury's side. Rejecting the divine right of kings, Locke said that societies form governments by mutual agreement. Locke also developed a definition of property as the product of a person's labor that would be foundational for both Adam Smith's capitalism and Karl Marx's socialism. In his "Thoughts Concerning Education", Locke argued for a broadened syllabus and better treatment of students-ideas that were an enormous influence on Jean-Jacques Rousseau's novel "Emile". In three "Letters Concerning Toleration", Locke suggested that governments should respect freedom of religion except when the dissenting belief was a threat to public order. Even within its limitations, Locke's toleration did not argue that all beliefs were equally good or true, but simply that governments were not in a position to decide which one was correct. Locke spent his final 14 years in Essex at the home of Sir Francis Masham and his wife, the philosopher Lady Damaris Cudworth