When John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Wrington, Somerset, England, he entered a world riven by intense religious and political conflict. This conflict reached its greatest intensity in the Civil Wars of 1641–1649 and the rump Parliament’s trial and execution of Charles I in January 1649. It re-emerged in the political and conspiratorial challenges to Charles II from the mid-1670s to mid-1680s and continued through the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Locke studied at the prestigious Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. From the late 1660s into the early 1680s he was physician and intellectual aide in the household of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who became the leader of the political forces opposed to the authoritarian tendencies of Charles II.

The Two Treatises of Government were drafted around 1680 in support of Shaftesbury’s attempts to limit monarchical authority. Locke fled to Holland in 1683 after the Rye House plot to assassinate Charles II and his brother James was discovered. A Letter Concerning Toleration was written while Locke was in Holland and probably working to support continued resistance in England to the rule of James II (who had succeeded Charles II in 1685). Both works were published toward the end of 1689 after Locke returned to England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Throughout the 17th century, there was profound conflict across Britain about which religious doctrines and practices were to be mandated by state authority. Most of the parties to disputes concerning religion and the state accepted the premise that the head of state had the right to decree what religion his or her subjects would follow—as long as the sovereign chose the true religion. The only question among these disputants was which religion was the true one that should be imposed by the sovereign. However, further disputes arose between those who accepted the premise that rulers have the right to enforce religious uniformity and advocates of principles of toleration who maintained that rulers must respect the liberty of conscience of their subjects. Britain was also convulsed by a parallel but more general dispute about who possessed ultimate political authority. Was it the monarch? Or was it Parliament? Or was authority somehow divided among different political bodies? Most of the parties to these disputes shared the premise that whoever has political authority has absolute, unlimited political authority.

However, the premise that political authority must be unlimited in its scope came under attack as theorists developed or refined the idea that political authority exists only for certain limited purposes and that when rulers pursue other purposes their actions transgress those limits. Not surprisingly, the contention that the scope of political authority is limited was opposed by defenders of the idea that all sovereigns must have unlimited authority. Locke’s political philosophy fundamentally rejects the doctrine of unlimited, unchecked, political authority as put forward, especially, by Robert Filmer (1588–1653) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). In his Second Treatise of Government and his A Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke synthesizes the arguments for religious toleration and the more general contention that toleration must be extended to all peaceful activities. Locke argued that liberty and not authoritarian control is the basis for a peaceful and prosperous society. As The Essential John Locke explains, the ultimate ground for Locke’s anti-authoritarian advocacy of toleration and liberty is his affirmation of each individual’s possession of natural rights that all other persons—especially political sovereigns—are obligated to respect.

The political conflicts and philosophical disputes that raged in Britain throughout most of the 17th century were, of course, different in their details from the conflicts and disputes of our early 21st-century world. Yet, the fundamental issues are remarkably similar. They include the nature and sanctity of human freedom, the relationship between respect for freedom and the maintenance of social order, the basis and scope of justified toleration, the justifying purpose of government, and the fundamental limits (if any) on governmental authority. Locke’s classical liberal political philosophy speaks to each of these issues (and more).

Classical liberalism is the view that the primary political principle is that individual liberty is to be respected and protected. Individual liberty ranges across both “personal” and “economic” choices. It includes the liberty to decide for oneself what religion one will follow, what aesthetic or cultural values one will prize and pursue, and what personal interactions one will enter into with others (who also choose those interactions). Individual liberty also includes one’s liberty to develop one’s economic capacities as one chooses, to pursue a career of one’s choice, to acquire property as a means of carrying out one’s life plans, and to use one’s acquired property as one chooses—again with the proviso that one’s actions do not deprive others of their like liberties.

Classical liberalism sees each individual as having a moral sovereignty over his or her own life that no individual or group may properly invade or nullify. This does not mean that classical liberalism celebrates a world in which everyone lives in splendid isolation. Rather, it celebrates society as a voluntary association of individuals each of whom is free—singly, but much more likely, in cooperation with others—to pursue his or her own chosen ends in his or her own chosen, albeit liberty respecting, ways. A key component of classical liberalism is the view that individual liberty is at the least the primary source of desirable social and economic order. Desirable social and economic order arises from the ground up. Since ground-up order will reflect the diverse desires, ambitions, knowledge, and capacities of the individuals who make up such an order, such order will necessarily be more complex, vibrant, and dynamic than any order that might be imposed from the top down by social engineers and state planners.

Coercion is the great enemy of liberty and of the benefits of freely chosen cooperative endeavours. From the classical liberal perspective, the only acceptable coercion is coercion that is provoked by and directed against unprovoked coercion. Coercion—especially understood as the use of physical force or the threat of such use—may be employed only in defence of the liberty of individuals and the associations they voluntarily form. The distinctive feature of political institutions, that is, of governments, is their possession and use of coercive power. Hence, the classical liberal’s endorsement of respect for and protection of individual liberty as the primary political principle yields a demand for radical limits on state power and action.

Locke never married and during his later years lived with the family of Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham at Oates in High Laver, Essex. He died on October 28, 1704 and was buried in the churchyard of the village of High Laver.