John Locke and the Uncivilized Society

Scott Robinson is assistant professor of political science and assistant director of the Morris Family Center for Law and Liberty at Houston Baptist University.

John Locke and the Uncivilized Society offers a fresh and provocative account of John Locke's political theory that both speaks to scholars and the public today. By showing how Locke's philosophical ideas of history, religion, and education inform his theories of consent, property, and resistance, Robinson illuminates how Locke is relevant to understanding contemporary events like radical Islam, Black Lives Matter, and cattle ranchers' rights. For Robinson, our current state of incivility is not a symptom of civic decline but a manifestation of Locke's philosophical ideas that ultimately are limited and self-serving. John Locke and the Uncivilized Society is the book to start this re-investigation of Locke's theories to understand how they are used - and misused - in contemporary American politics.

• Chapter 1: The Uncivilized Society: John Locke’s Ironic Place in America TodayChapter 2: Conflicting Views of Locke in the Secondary Literature Chapter 3: Locke’s Political Thought and PneumopathologyChapter 4: Locke’s Speculative View of HistoryChapter 5: Locke’s Abstract Definition of RebellionChapter 6: Locke’s Limited Idea of ReasonChapter 7: Locke’s Limited Idea of ReligionChapter 8: Locke’s Limited Idea of EducationChapter 9: Islamic Terrorism, Locke’s Theory of Positive Toleration and How the Ideological Dynamics of the War on Terrorism Advantaged the Islamic StateChapter 10: The Hole in the Fence: Shortcomings of Lockean Theory and How to Improve Liberal Justifications for Resistance