John Locke and Natural Rights

Why this matters

A government that answers to divine right and a government that answers to the people it governs rest on entirely different reasons for existing at all. Locke's 1689 argument, that people are born with rights to life, liberty, and property and that government exists only to protect them, is the reason the second version outlasted the first.

Nobody questions where a government's authority comes from until someone hands them the argument that first challenged the divine right of kings. Tracing Locke's own words forward into Jefferson's Declaration shows that an old philosophical argument can still be doing quiet work inside a founding document students think they already know by heart.

From one teacher to another

Locke's a hard sell when nobody's thought about where government's authority comes from in the first place, so I built this one to start with the question instead of the philosopher's name. Students read an excerpt from Locke's 1689 Second Treatise of Government and use it to explain his idea of natural rights, that people are born with a right to life, liberty, and property simply because they're human, and that government exists only to protect those rights. They work through Locke's state of nature, his law of nature, and the social contract that turns individuals into a government by consent rather than by the divine right of kings. The lesson closes by tracing the line from Locke's own words to Jefferson's, since the Declaration of Independence borrows Locke's language and reshapes it into the pursuit of happiness. Guided notes track the slides, the activity has a full answer key, and the quiz and exit ticket both come with keys.