Civics In A Year
What do you really know about American government, the Constitution, and your rights as a citizen?
Civics in a Year is a fast-paced podcast series that delivers essential civic knowledge in just 10 minutes per episode. Over the course of a year, we’ll explore 250 key questions—from the founding documents and branches of government to civil liberties, elections, and public participation.
Rooted in the Civic Literacy Curriculum from the Center for American Civics at Arizona State University, this series is a collaborative project supported by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Each episode is designed to spark curiosity, strengthen constitutional understanding, and encourage active citizenship.
Whether you're a student, educator, or lifelong learner, Civics in a Year will guide you through the building blocks of American democracy—one question at a time.
Civics In A Year
Locke's Ideas of Life, Liberty, and Property Changed the Course of History
Dr. Paul Carrese explores John Locke's profound influence on the Declaration of Independence and American founding principles. Locke's philosophy of natural rights - that all humans possess inherent, equal rights to life, liberty, and property - provided the intellectual foundation for revolution and continues to shape American politics 250 years later.
• Locke was an Enlightenment philosopher whose Second Treatise of Government (1692) became central to American revolutionary thinking
• The Declaration's famous assertion that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" directly echoes Locke's natural rights philosophy
• Locke's social contract theory established that governments exist solely to protect natural rights
• Americans adapted Locke's ideas, blending them with religious principles and common law traditions
• Locke's philosophy of equal natural rights continued to influence American history through Lincoln's anti-slavery arguments, the 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights declaration, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights advocacy.
Other podcast episodes mentioned:
Equality in America: Unpacking "All Men Are Created Equal"
The Declaration's Golden Promise: Life, Liberty, and Happiness Explored
Enlightenment DNA: The Philosophical Origins of America's Declaration
Social Contracts: Our Civic Foundation
Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!
School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership
Welcome back to the Civics in a Year podcast. Today we're talking about somebody who we've mentioned quite a bit in our podcast but feel like he deserves his own podcast. So we have Dr Paul Kreese back with us and Dr Kreese today we're talking about John Locke. So our question is who was John Locke and how did his ideas about natural rights influence the Declaration? We've done a lot of episodes on the Declaration. We've talked about natural rights, but in this episode we're really focusing on John Locke.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that's a very important thing to do. This crucial idea from more than one philosopher and source, but very importantly from John Locke, about natural rights of individuals is a very important element of the Declaration of Independence and therefore of the American founding, and I'll finish with the argument that it has maintained that central importance across 250 years of America's political development as a democratic republic. So who is Locke? He is a philosopher of the Enlightenment living in the 17th century. We did an earlier discussion podcast about philosophers of the Enlightenment. I referred to Locke there as a member of what could be called the radical enlightenment or the more radical enlightenment. That might be somewhat controversial. I'll explain what that means. His most influential work for the Declaration of Independence, for American thinking about whether or not to separate from Britain, whether in effect to have a political revolution to try to establish an independent American polity the most important work there is his second treatise of government. So he wrote a work that was published in 1692, treatises of Government. The second treatise of government is a relatively brief work in which he moves from very fundamental principles about the meaning of being human in relation to justice and equality and liberty and develops, as we'll discuss, this idea of individual natural rights and that leads ultimately to an argument that if a form of government is not protecting your individual natural rights, you and others can join together to overthrow such a government.
Speaker 2:An enlightenment philosopher meaning new and modern ideas developed by philosophers who are skeptical of or questioning classical Greek and Roman philosophy, medieval Christian influence philosophy questioning the Renaissance. They want to do new and modern thinking about central questions of human life, politics, ethics and morals, the meaning of humanity and how to organize human life. And enlightenment meant spreading these new ideas, this new light, to change and transform political and social life. And he's basically an advocate of a more Republican kind of government. He doesn't explicitly say that monarchy is wrong or aristocracy is wrong, but government must protect these individual, equal natural rights and we'll talk a little bit more about that. He had to do this very carefully because he's living under a monarchy with an aristocracy the Lords, the House of Lords in England. Other advocates of Republican government had been punished, been forced into exile, to exile, some had been actually put to death by the English monarchy during the tumultuous century in which Locke lived. So why is this an important influence on the Declaration of Independence? Because Locke's Second Treatise of Government becomes a leading view about what free Republican government means and what its principles should be.
Speaker 2:He's widely read in the Anglo-American world, in Britain, in its various colonies around the world, especially in North America, and the influence he has in the Declaration is most evident, and we'll look at this in just a second. In the early parts of the Declaration and then because, as I mentioned, of his influence on the Declaration, he ends up being a philosopher who is persistently important. If people want to ignore him and not study him, they're doing themselves a disservice. If you want to disagree with him and criticize him, fine, that's been done as well. But you really do need to know Locke's philosophy in order to understand America.
Speaker 2:Now I will mention, as we move on, that, in my view, the American founders in the Second Continental Congress, thomas Jefferson and his draft of the Declaration of Independence. They are blending Locke's philosophy what I think of as a more radical Enlightenment philosophy with other traditions of thought and interpreting Lockean philosophy to fit with, let's say, more moderate ideas from the Enlightenment and also ideas of biblical religion and Christianity and the common law tradition. So to get a direct answer to your question, how does Locke's philosophy of natural rights influence. The Declaration of Independence. If you would read the second paragraph, probably still the most famous, widely quoted part of the Declaration of Independence get out several of these clauses and we can see Locke's influence.
Speaker 1:We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just power from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute a new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.
Speaker 2:Great. So let's work backward. What you have in that third clause is an argument for a right of revolution. A people can decide. Right, it's the right of the people that the government under which they live is not protecting. Now to move further back in the argument protecting these natural rights, these individual natural rights that every human being has. All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That's the first premise. And the second premise is that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. This is the only purpose of government. Government's not supposed to do everything in human life and in human society. Government's job is to protect these rights, to secure these rights. And then that immediately suggests limits on government. Because what are these rights? Well, among them, in the American view, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 2:Now Locke's second treatise. The formulation is every human being has an individual right to life, to not have their life taken away or threatened by someone else's unjust force, a right to liberty, political liberty and liberty beyond that in private life and to property. So Locke's version is life, liberty and property. And property is a very important concept for Locke. It really means each individual's autonomy, in effect, and he uses the metaphor or a larger meaning of property to say these rights are the property of each individual, but it also obviously means physical property that you have, that you acquire through your own labor and your effort and your money, and things like that. So these are the rights that governments are supposed to protect. So these are the rights that governments are supposed to protect. If they don't, people can decide to challenge the government, maybe even replace the government and set up a new government.
Speaker 2:Now, in this second treatise of government, the more extensive argument not fully present in the Declaration of Independence is what's called the social contract argument for Locke, that if we are individuals with equal natural rights, we are in some ways kind of separated each other from each other. In thinking about what the natural condition of human beings is without you know, trying to imagine what the first principles of government are. Well, to imagine what they are, you need to think of the pre-government period, and Locke refers to this as the state of nature. This is how human beings are, apart from any society, government, custom, convention, and in that state of nature we are equal and individual, in a way separate from each other. But we can figure out by reason or in practice that it's best to sort of make a deal with each other.
Speaker 2:But we can figure out by reason or in practice that it's best to sort of make a deal with each other, make a contract to set up a government. Because, as the way it works out among human beings, if we're separate and equal from each other, some people will try to abuse their power and their position and their capacities. So we do need government and we need laws to protect the equal natural rights. But we can form that either philosophically, so to speak, through a social contract to make the argument that this is the legitimate form of government if it meets some kind of ideal social contract, or it can actually happen. You could say that the Second Continental Congress made a kind of social contract among the 13 colonies to make them states, to declare independence, to continue fighting the American Revolutionary War.
Speaker 1:And listeners. We do have an episode on the social contract that Dr Philip Munoz from Notre Dame did and I will link that in our show notes and he goes a little bit more into depth about this. So Dr Philip Munoz from Notre Dame did and I will link that in our show notes and he goes a little bit more into depth about this. So, dr Kreese, why is it so important to understand Locke's ideas of individual national rights? For understanding, you know, america's founding and here we are getting ready to celebrate America 250 and our 250 years as a democratic republic.
Speaker 2:This is a foundational principle of the Declaration that I think the Americans tried to fit with other important principles and it's the package of these ideas from the Declaration extending into other important moments and documents in the American founding, obviously the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is the package that makes the American founding so. Locke, for example, in the Second Treatise, refers to God and a divinity as the source of these rights, the source of these rights. So the phrasing in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence about the laws of nature and nature's God being the foundational principle of justice and the source of these rights, that fits with Locke's idea.
Speaker 2:Locke also wrote many different works of philosophy. He didn't write one big book that fit a whole range of ideas together in one comprehensive treatise. He wrote smaller treatises and letters even, and he addressed, for example, religious liberty in a letter concerning toleration, and he wrote a separate work on the reasonableness of Christianity, so suggesting the importance of religious belief and especially liberty about religious belief for the kind of free human being he's describing, arguing for, defending in his political work, the second treatise. He also does talk about an idea of happiness in a treatise, an essay he writes about logical philosophy and human meaning. That also has importance for ethics and that's called the essay concerning human understanding. So I think the Americans interpret Locke to fit with. They sort of draw out some of the more complex elements in Locke's philosophy to what soften, the more radical elements, this emphasis on individuals separate from each other, needing to form a social contract with each other. They kind of moderate Locke's philosophy and blend some of these ideas he does talk about in other works religious belief, religious liberty, happiness and ethics to fit together into this package of American political life.
Speaker 2:I'll just finish with this thought on the importance of the Lockean natural rights philosophy for 250 years, from the American founding forward. The final phrasing of the Declaration of Independence about sacred honor, that doesn't quite fit with Locke's philosophy but the Americans thought well, it doesn't negate Locke's philosophy because he does refer to happiness in the essay concerning human understanding. So when the American signers of the Declaration say that we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor to defend these equal natural rights and these principles of justice, that's a grander idea of human life in relation to, in effect, being a citizen, being a citizen of a just political order, either one that you're fighting for, or one that you already have and you're defending. So the Americans are sort of adapting Locke's philosophy and fitting it with other important principles, historical sources, as I've mentioned, the common law in American thinking, the American mind, as Jefferson calls it.
Speaker 1:Dr Kreis, thank you. And listeners we do have. So Dr Kreis has done three other episodes that kind of tie all of this in together. We're asking big questions but only taking a small amount of time to answer them. So I'm actually going to link three other episodes that Dr Kreis has done, that I believe all four of these plus the social contract one with Dr Philip Munoz If you're studying, you know the origins of the declaration and really wanting to dive in, I really feel like this episode and then the four I'm going to link are really good Listen, especially if you're in high school or college and studying this. So, dr Kreis, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you, liz. Can I just add one final point here? Yes, please, across 250 years. So if you think, students, citizens, serious Americans, think about our arguments over slavery in the 19th century, what to do about it? Lincoln hammers away at the Declaration of Independence and equal natural rights. That shows the importance of the Lockean philosophy extending almost 100 years right into the 19th century.
Speaker 2:In 1848, the Seneca Falls Declaration right the first advocates of women's rights, equal political and legal rights for women. They take the Declaration of Independence and adapt it, sort of rewrite it to show that all of its principles fit perfectly well and in fact call for equal natural rights. Address, invokes the magnificent words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and praises the architects of our republic. For what? For equal civil rights. Now that 100 years earlier slavery was abolished, there still is rampant racial discrimination and segregation. There isn't equal civil rights for people of all colors. So King is invoking the principle of equal rights by nature that should be recognized in law. That comes from Locke, and equal natural rights at the founding and in the Declaration. So these ideas matter well past the founding period and they continue to matter today at our 250th anniversary.
Speaker 1:Thank you for adding that. I am going to link all of the documents that you talked about there because they are a really good study. Just kind of all around, Dr Preece. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, Liz.
