Two Treatises on Government
1689
- early works to 1800
- political science
- liberty
- open_syllabus_project
- toleration
- early works to 1700
- politics
- essays
- authority
- nonfiction
The story
The “Two Treatises of Government” is about the former false principles and foundation of sir Robert Filmer and his followers. They are detected and overthrown. The latter is an essay concerning the true original extent and end of civil government.Please Note: This book is easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable.
What it’s like
Dense, argumentative prose with the formal, unhurried cadence of late seventeenth-century English: long periodic sentences, legal citations, and sharp rhetorical turns that read like a patient debater leaning across a table. The page is text-heavy and unadorned, with no illustrations or ornament, so the experience is one of sustained concentration, the kind of slow reading best done with a pencil and a cup of tea in a quiet room by lamplight. Its mood is measured and combative at once, a calm intellectual brightness that turns suddenly pointed when it dismantles an opponent's reasoning. The pacing is deliberate and chapter-by-chapter, building an argument rather than telling a story, and its emotional register is cool and principled rather than warm. Violence is absent from the text itself, though political upheaval and the threat of arbitrary power sit in the background throughout. It suits readers who enjoy classic political philosophy for its own sake, students of the early modern period, and anyone wanting a serious, quiet read on liberty, consent and the limits of authority.
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