This collection considers one of the most important figures of the modern canon of political philosophy, John Locke. A physician by training and profession, Locke not only wrote one of the most important and well-known treatises of the modern canon, but also made important contributions in the areas of seventeenth-century law and public policy, epistemology, philosophy of language, religion, and economics.

There has been a long-standing debate in feminist scholarship on Locke as to whether this early founder of modern liberal thought was a strong feminist or whether he ushered in a new, and uniquely modern, form of sexism. The essays grapple with this controversy but also move beyond it to the meaning of gender, the status of femininity and masculinity, and how these affect Locke's construction of the state and law.

The volume opens with three of the early "classic" feminist essays on Locke and follows them with reflective essays by their original authors that engage Locke with issues of globalization and international justice. Other essays examine Locke's midwifery notes, his treatise on education, his writings on Christianity, his contributions to poor-law policy, his economic writings, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In addition to essays by leading feminist theorists, the volume also includes essays by some leading Locke scholars for whom gender is not normally a primary focus, so that the volume should speak to a wide range of scholarly interests and concerns.

Besides the editors, the contributors are Teresa Brennan, Melissa Butler, Terrell Carver, Carole Pateman, Carol Pech, Gordon Schochet, Mary Lyndon Shanley, Jeremy Waldron, Joanne Wright, and Linda Zerilli.

Kirstie McClure offers a major reinterpretation of John Locke's thought that is important not only for the light it sheds on Locke but also for the questions it poses about liberalism and rights-based theories of politics. Sensitive to the range of interpretative and political issues that Locke's work presents. McClure's analysis is impressive for its balance and subtlety, and for her command of the enormous literature on Locke. Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, between Two Tracts on Government (1660) and Two Treatises on Government (1690). Locke subjected the idea of civil power to increasing scrutiny. In one generation, he moved from supporting order for its own sake to defending resistance, and ended with a profoundly modern epistemology. McClure suggests that Locke's concepts of government by consent, equality, rights, and the rule of law were embedded in his theistic cosmology. Although Locke may well have been a constitutionalist, his theoretical concerns were far broader than any legal or constitutional interpretation of his work might suggest. To make this claim, McClure explains, is to deny neither the significance of "rights" nor the importance of institutions and consent in Locke's theoretical production. Rather, it is to insist that such themes are merely parts of a more comprehensive theoretical project, the focus of which, bluntly stated in the Second Treatise, was "to understand Political Power right".

This collection considers one of the most important figures of the modern canon of political philosophy, John Locke. A physician by training and profession, Locke not only wrote one of the most important and well-known treatises of the modern canon, but also made important contributions in the areas of seventeenth-century law and public policy, epistemology, philosophy of language, religion, and economics.

There has been a long-standing debate in feminist scholarship on Locke as to whether this early founder of modern liberal thought was a strong feminist or whether he ushered in a new, and uniquely modern, form of sexism. The essays grapple with this controversy but also move beyond it to the meaning of gender, the status of femininity and masculinity, and how these affect Locke's construction of the state and law.

The volume opens with three of the early "classic" feminist essays on Locke and follows them with reflective essays by their original authors that engage Locke with issues of globalization and international justice. Other essays examine Locke's midwifery notes, his treatise on education, his writings on Christianity, his contributions to poor-law policy, his economic writings, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In addition to essays by leading feminist theorists, the volume also includes essays by some leading Locke scholars for whom gender is not normally a primary focus, so that the volume should speak to a wide range of scholarly interests and concerns.

Besides the editors, the contributors are Teresa Brennan, Melissa Butler, Terrell Carver, Carole Pateman, Carol Pech, Gordon Schochet, Mary Lyndon Shanley, Jeremy Waldron, Joanne Wright, and Linda Zerilli.