On Locke's Idea Of Liberty

Locke was an outstanding representative of the 17 century British Enlightenment, and also the initiator of the Western liberalism tradition.As one of the founders of the liberalism, Locke taught glibly about "people are born free", and he believed that freedom is a natural right, an inherent human talent or ability, a result of human nature. The freedom that Locke chants is under the rule of law; it is linked closely together with reason, ethics and the laws of human beings; what it expresses is the respect and protect for the individuality, dignity, character and freedom of human beings. Freedom is so important Locke defines it as the foundation and protective screen of all the rest of mankind. To achieve individual freedom, Locke not only criticized and rejected the authoritarian state and anarchy, but also completely released people from the absolute and arbitrary power of the human tyrants. Thus he determined that people are free, independent and equal. To achieve individual freedom, Locke made people go out of the anarchy without the existence of the common authority at all by social contract, trust concepts and the principle of people's agreement. And then he made them enter the political society, found the government which endows them strong political power to protect people's freedoms. Similarly to achieve personal freedom, Locke designed the constitutional government posed by the principle of limited government, the rule of law theory, the doctrine of separation of powers and the principle of people's sovereignty, through which he attempted to clear out the factors of absolute and totalitarian which harms the individual freedom from the human society.Locke's ideas of freedom have enormous contribution and far-reaching historical impact in the history the development of human political and legal ideas as well as the Western liberalism tradition. His stress on the individual freedoms, the protection of individual rights, the vigilance against government power and the framework of the constitutional government, all these have important meaning for the construction of Chinese modern legal system.