locke

The pragmatic in me would rather meet Plato and Locke in a one semester summary than reading Plato or Locke and working out the exegesis out of it.

In the time of Empiricism, the philosophers George Berkeley and John Locke proposed something similar.

True, but Locke was very influential on the modern libeterian movement.

It was really only until Locke came along that anyone presented a top-down theory attempting to account for the acquisition of basic forms of knowledge (e.g.

Karl Marx took the 'labor theory of value' argument from David Ricardo, who had taken it from Adam Smith, who had taken it from John Locke among others.

Those latter rights are also rights, acknowledged implicitly by the Constitution (as Locke --- who also didn't support unfettered free speech --- would say, the government protects rights, but doesn't grant them).

It is sad that the country of John Locke, the Father of Classical Liberalism, is fast becoming the realization of the nightmare that was "1984".

A lot of tax policy in John Locke and Henry George's day was about getting "unused" land into "productive" uses.

Still, I suspect that the difference between encountering Plato or Locke in a one-semester summary and actually reading Plato or Locke is comparable to the difference between encountering "The Marriage of Figaro" in a plot synopsis and in attending a competent performance.

But Begriff's post is a welcome reminder for me that most of us already have everything we need to exercise what Locke (and I think Begriff) would call our "natural rights", except the will to do so.

More specifically, modern notions of religious freedom generally get traced back to John Locke's Letters Concerning Toleration (1689–92).

The OP point is incorrect since it incorrectly states that Locke's definition of human rights came from Libertarianism.

This definition dates back far before the libertarian movement, at least to John Locke's Second Treatise (published in 1689).