Question

Match each characteristic to the correct philosopher.

Answer 1

Here are your matches:

JOHN LOCKE:

• wrote the Second Treatise  on Government
• supported the concept of  popular sovereignty
• believed that natural law  was given to humans by God
•  maintained that the  government cannot  block a citizen’s rights  to life, property, and  liberty

WILLIAM BLACKSTONE

• wrote the Commentaries on  the Laws of England
• believed that natural law  was given to humans by God
• maintained that the  government cannot  block a citizen’s rights  to life, property, and  liberty

You'll notice that Locke (1632-1704) and William Blackstone (1723-1780) were in agreement on natural law as something divinely ordained, as well as on the rights of citizens.  

However, they differed on the topic of popular sovereignty.  According to Sara Zeigler, writing for The First Amendment Encyclopedia, "Although Blackstone was heavily influenced by John Locke’s work, he found the concept of revolution troubling and acknowledged a right to revolution only in theory, contending that power returned to the people only when sovereign power had been utterly destroyed. Thus, as long as Parliament existed, its power remained absolute, a doctrine known as parliamentary sovereignty."   Blackstone did not support the ideas of full popular sovereignty and the people's right to revolt against a government in the way that Locke did.

On the subject of people's rights, Blackstone wrote (in his Commentaries):

• The rights of all mankind ... may be reduced to three principal or primary articles; the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property: because, as there is no other known method of compulsion, or abridging man’s natural free will, but by an infringement or diminution of one or other of these important rights, the preservation of these, inviolate, may justly be said to include the preservation of our civil immunities in their largest and most extensive sense.