The stated purpose of Locke’s first Treatise (Book I) is to dispute the divine right theory of kingship. Locke states on the first page of the essay that the section is meant to serve as a direct response to Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, in which Filmer argued that the monarch’s right to rule is divinely sanctioned and that kings are not subject to the will of their people. Locke refutes Filmer’s defense of absolute monarchy and argues that no legitimate government can be derived from Filmer’s unfounded theological arguments.
Once through with Filmer, Locke uses the Second Treatise, or Book II, to explain his own theory of government, one based on the natural rights of man and the idea of personal property. There are nineteen chapters in this section; each is focused a distinct idea regarding the rights of man and the duties of government. Locke begins by describing the state of nature in which all people are equal and follow a set of natural laws, such as punishment for crimes and self-preservation. He states that all people are in this state until they agree to a binding social or political contract. Locke may also be using Book II to address the arguments of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, which was published in 1651, and stirred responses from many scholars and politically minded individuals. Hobbes’s work argued in favor of strong, absolutist government to keep people from exploiting or manipulating the property or rights of others (his state of nature was decidedly more cutthroat than Locke’s version).
In Chapter V, the excerpt reprinted in our version of Robinson Crusoe, Locke introduces the idea of personal labor as justification for claim to private property. This proof sets the foundation for his discussion of civil society, which he defines as a group of individuals that willingly resign their natural rights and submit to one common authority in order to safeguard their property and happiness. In the following chapters, Locke lays out the rules that must govern a legitimate authoritative body, and discusses the need to create just laws and then consistently respect and uphold them. Locke ends Book II with a discussion of tyranny and the innate right of the governed to dissolve a ruling body that no longer concerns itself with their well being.
Despite the insistence and confidence expressed in Two Treatises, his contemporaries did not know Locke as philosopher until 1690. For the majority of his life, Locke was regarded as a close confidant of the Earl of Shaftesbury, a Whig leader who opposed the tyrannical rule of King James II. In addition to being a close friend, Locke occasionally acted as secretary to Shaftesbury. Before publishing the Two Treatises, Locke helped draft a proposal recommending toleration for dissenters, a manuscript on the rate of interest in England, and a constitution for the colony of Carolina (Shaftesbury was a proprietor). In 1983, fearing retribution for his political affiliations, Locke fled to the Netherlands, returning to England only after the successful ousting of James II. Upon his return, Locke made his first appearance as a philosopher with the publication of An Essay on Humane Understanding, which debuted in 1890 and postulated the idea of the human mind as a “blank slate.” This was the same year as the publication of Two Treatises, yet Locke went to great lengths to publish the second work anonymously.
Though Locke published the Two Treatises anonymously, his authorship was “widely suspected” from the time of publication until the acknowledgement was made public after his death in 1704. Several intellectuals and friends of Locke seemed to take for granted that Locke was the author and mentioned his name in reference to the text in private correspondence and sometimes publically. According to Dr. Peter Laslett, an expert on Locke’s writings, writers of the late 17th century would cite the book as if it were clear that they and readers knew who wrote it. Locke spent a lot of time and effort trying to conceal the fact that he had written this book, and “erased from his papers every recognizable reference to its existence” and even filed it in his own library under “anonymous.”
Two Treatises was originally printed from Locke’s personal manuscript in 1690, and the first publication was, in Locke’s eyes, a complete failure. This happened despite the book being published by the firm of Awnsham and John Churchill, one of the best printing houses in London at the time, which perhaps serves to show the inconsistent nature of early printing houses. By the time the book went to print, it was a “remnant” of its former self, as more than half of Locke’s original manuscript had been lost or discarded. Locke acknowledges these missing pages in the first paragraph of the book’s Preface, calling the book “the beginning and end of a discourse, concerning government” (Locke, A3). He says, “’tis not worthwhile to tell thee” the contents of the missing pages; we must be satisfied with what is given (Locke, A3). Adding insult to injury, the typeface of the first edition was printed irregularly due to the printer’s miscalculations, a paragraph was missing from the second treatise and the First book ended mid sentence. The poor quality of the book and the lack of author must have acted to discount the ideas within, and the work drew no direct reaction from readers.
Completely unsatisfied with the physical state of his ideas, Locke wished for a second edition to be printed in 1694, but he had destroyed his original manuscript and all his notes, so he had to amend the first edition. His amended version had over 150 alterations, but he was still unsatisfied with the clarity of the ideas themselves. In fact, when a page of corrections went missing, Locke almost scrapped the whole project, writing in a letter that “[the book]’s fate is it seems to be the worst printed that ever book was.” According to Churchill, the second edition was worse than the first. Full of mistakes and awkward sentences, the book did not make for pleasant reading. Churchill finally agreed to print it cheaply (selling it at sixpence—about $6 today and almost half as much as Hobbes’s Levianthan) in order to sell it to “common readers” while Locke worked to correct the punctuation so that they could print another addition on good paper with better type. The third edition came out in 1698, but Locke was still unsatisfied and left instructions in his will for a forth addition to be printed with further corrections.
Perhaps, in part, because of these numerous publishing issues, Two Treatises did not make a big splash in the public scene until decades after its original publication. Locke’s book garnered no critical responses until 1703 and it took two more years before anyone expended any real effort to refute Lock’s ideas. Two Treatises was even tossed aside by many Whig writers in drafting petitions, as the work did not introduce any radical thoughts and many of Locke’s ideas could be found in other published works. The majority of periodicals and book review journals of Locke’s time completely ignored the publication of the Two Treatises. The few journals that actually reviewed the piece, both English and French, were dually unimpressed, though they assessed Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding in some detail. It seems that due to it’s lack of media attention, Two Treatises would not have been venerated by the general public in England, despite the circulation of the cheaply printed and badly edited second edition. However, the ideas put forth in Locke’s work must have been well known, as the hotly debated political issues of the time would surely trickle from Parliament into the streets.
Despite the lack of immediate or sizeable response to the publication of Two Treatises, there is evidence that it was read and well regarded by many of Locke’s intellectual contemporaries. The piece, especially the idea of the necessity of consent to govern, was sited in many Whig pamphlets, letters between scholars, and debates among “learned society” in both Oxford and London.
In a essay written in 1976 on the reception of Two Treatises, Martyn Thompson discusses the possibility that Locke’s book was not immediately revered by his generation because the ideas put forth by Locke do not align with the stated purpose of the book as discussed in Preface. Though Two Treatises is clearly a work of philosophical wanderings and conclusions, Locke announces from the start that the book is a defense of the recently concluded Glorious Revolution. Reading the book (or sections of the book) today we do not feel this dissonance and therefore view Locke’s philosophies in a broader context—we see what his ideas inspired, rather than the narrow circumstance they were written to uphold.
