John Locke and Modern Life

“Lee Ward is an intellectual provocateur of the finest sort. In this gracefully written volume, he insists that we take John Locke seriously as a systematic thinker; he challenges the notion that the argument presented in the Two Treatises of Government is at odds with that presented in An Essay concerning Human Understanding; and he shows us that the program that the English philosopher articulated in his mature works with respect to the first principles of government, constitutional prudence, marriage, the family, education, religion, and the conduct of foreign policy forms a comprehensive and consistent whole.” —Paul A. Rahe, Hillsdale College
“Ward’s John Locke and Modern Life is one of the most impressive of this generation’s studies of Locke. Almost all previous studies have focused on one or another of Locke's works or on one or another of the themes in his works. Ward gives a comprehensive account of Locke's moral and political philosophy as a whole and in relation to ‘modern life’: i.e., in terms of the implications of Locke for how modern life has evolved and for guidance on how it ought to be. Given the explosion of Locke scholarship, Ward is particularly impressive in his ability to encompass so much of this literature and to settle in a clear, moderate, persuasive way many of the most controversial issues in the literature, an achievement much helped along by the much more synoptic view of Locke’s corpus that he takes.” —Michael Zuckert, University of Notre Dame