J.P.Sommerville

Locke on Government

Suggested reading

General

Ashcraft, R, ed., John Locke: critical assessments, 4 vols, London1991.

Parry, Geraint, John Locke, London 1978.
[Sensible introduction.]

Schochet, Gordon, ed., Life, liberty and property: essays on Locke's political ideas, Belmont 1971.

Seliger, M., The liberal politics of John Locke, London 1968.

Simmons, J., The Lockean theory of rights, Princeton 1992.

Tully, James, An approach to political philosophy: John Locke in contexts, Cambridge 1993.

Wood, N., The politics of Locke's philosophy, Berkeley 1983/

Yolton, J.W., A Locke dictionary, Oxford 1993.

Property

Cherno, M., 'Locke on property', in Ethics 1957.

Cranston, M., John Locke, London 1957.
[Standard biography.]

Dunn, John, John Locke, Oxford 1984.
[Good, brief introduction.]

Dunn, John, The political thought of John Locke, Cambridge 1969.
[Difficult but worthwhile.]

Macpherson, C.B., The political theory of possessive individualism, Oxford 1962.
[Highly influential Marxist  approach.]

Marshall, John, John Locke, Cambridge 1994.
[Long, worthwhile account.]

Schlatter, R.B., Private property: the history of an idea, London 1951.
[Important.]

Tully, James, A discourse on property: John Locke and his adversaries, Cambridge 1980.
[Much important material, but to be used with caution.]

Waldron, J., The right to private property, Oxford 1988.

Wood, N., John Locke and agrarian capitalism, Berkeley 1984.

Politics

Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary politics and Locke's Two Treatises, Princeton 1986.
[Very long but important.]

Forster, Greg, John Locke’s politics of moral consensus, Cambridge University Press, 2005    

Franklin, Julian, John Locke and the theory of sovereignty, Cambridge 1978.
[Interesting brief analysis.]

Goldie, Mark, 'John Locke's circle and James II', in Historical Journal 35 (1992), 557-86.
[Important. Casts doubt on  Ashcraft's views.]

Josephson, Peter, The great art of government : Locke’s use of consent, University Press of Kansas, 2002

Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis 1677-1683, Cambridge 1991. [Political background.]

Sidney, Algernon, Discourses concerning government, 1698, ed. Thomas G. West, Indianapolis 1990.
[Long-winded  reply to Filmer, worth comparing to Locke.]

Skinner, Quentin, The foundations of modern political thought, 2 vols, Cambridge 1978, vol.2, pp.111-358.
[Background to Locke in sixteenth-century constitutionalism.]

Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and equality : Christian foundations of John Locke’s political thought, Cambridge University Press, 2002.