"John Locke's model for Society" -- a brief 1 page essay on John Locke and his Model for Society.

Essay by PanzerDivisionCollege, Undergraduate December 2002

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-Over view- this was a brief 1 page essay used to "place" students into the correct section of a HIST 102 class. It talks about how John Locke came to formulating this model and a brief biography at the end, talking about how he got to where he was.

-Improvements- This was only a 1 page essay, it's pretty solid and i recieved very good comments. This paper was not graded, but it did place me into the "higher" section of the class.

John Locke's Model for Society

There were many great writers that emerged in the 17th century; in this brief summary I am concerned in one particular by the name John Locke (1632-1704) who wrote "Two Treatises of Government". Locke was against absolutism, a political theory that absolute power should be vested in one or more rulers given unlimited power. A mass movement happened 1688 called the Glorious Revolution, which basically took away future monarch's unlimited power.

From that point on in England, Monarchs would have to consult Parliament and the House of Commons before any action could occur. John Locke's "Two Treatises of Government" was used to absolve the revolution's events.

Locke created a model for society that helps define individualism. He brought up the laws of nature and reason, which entitles everyone to life, liberty and property. In Locke's model, power to rule is given to the people, who entrust a specified group of officials to settle all disputes only under the law of nature. The government is merely members of its own society; all powers not given to the government are reserved to the people themselves. The government's authority is contractual and conditional. Thus meaning if the government abuse's its power, then the people would have the right to expunge, and...