Social and Political Philosophy - Essay Example

Locke was amongst earliest thinkers who subject the problem of freedom to empirical analysis with the help of theory of social contract. From 1675, having clarified his socio-political ideology, he flitted between England to the continental Europe according to how well the regimes matched his ideas. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in UK had much to further strengthen Locke’s ideology. In his political thought Locke reasoned against the inalienable, divine and hereditary right of the monarch to rule.

Locke professed that the power of good governance gets invested in the ruler with surrender of right to life, liberty and property by the citizen as a rational purpose to secure his freedom. Such laws applied to communities as a whole with exception of none. If the ruler trampled upon the rights of his citizens, his forfeited the right to rule. A relationship of trust existed between man and the Government. He set forth his political agenda in the ‘The Two Treatises of Government.’ At the psychological level, he agreed with Hobbes that compatriot empiricist, that all perception occurred through the sense but stating his political ideology, but at the political level he argues against Hobbes of the right to rule is invested in the monarch through divine intervention.

With Hobbes, Locke endorses the idea of ‘self-interested’ of man but disagrees with him that he is desire-driven and selfish. Man, according to him is naturally social and altruistic (Ess, n.d). Endorsing the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he argued that right to rule could be forfeited if the ruler failed to protect the rights of the citizens. Locke wrote that man was moral and equal in the state of nature and he willingly enters into ‘social contract’ of the civil society, to advance his ends of peace and security People surrender unto a government a measure of their natural rights to secure the