Locke proposed a radical conception of political philosophy deduced from the principle of self-ownership and the corollary right to own property, which in turn is based on his famous claim that a man earns ownership over a resource when he mixes his labor with it. Government, he argued, should be limited to securing the life and property of its citizens, and is only necessary because, in an ideal, anarchic state of nature, various problems arise that would make life more insecure than under the protection of a minimal state. Locke is also renowned for his writings on toleration in which he espoused the right to freedom of conscience and religion (except when religion was deemed intolerant!), and for his cogent criticism of hereditary monarchy and patriarchalism. After his death, his mature political philosophy leaned support to the British Whig party and its principles, to the Age of Enlightenment, and the development of the separation of the State and Church in the American Constitution as well as to the rise of human rights theories in the Twentieth Century.
ፍትህ ለሁሉም / Justice for All