John LockeVerified

Locke's influential treatise argues that political power rests on the consent of the governed and that people possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property that precede government. His ideas became the philosophical foundation for democracy and revolution, making this abstract political philosophy surprisingly urgent.

Locke's revolutionary argument that the mind begins as a blank slate dismantles centuries of inherited assumptions about human nature, proposing instead that we are products of experience rather than essence.