This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://afribary.com/works/the-notion-of-human-rights-in-the-philosophy-of-john-locke. The second was published at https://www.britannica.com/topic/human-rights/Natural-law-transformed-into-natural-rights. The third was published at https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300129182-009/pdf. The fourth was published at http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/6/john-locke-and-the-second-treatise-on-government
Going through the pages of history, one will note that the rights of man have been bastardized and their rights trample in the mud. Thus, denying human rights is in no little means denying man his humanity and dignity, and by so doing doubting his existence. Thus, the issue of human rights is one of the major problems bothering the human person in the 21st century. The continuous neglect of the rights of man by most often countries has dehumanized man's humanity from being a 'person' to an 'it'. The continuous infringement into one's right is in the increase in our world today thereby denying man his very essence and dignity. This is because the human person is being dehumanized, oppressed and bastardized against the fundamental values of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. John Locke emerged with a political history that created space for what he called "a state of nature" where the respect for the individual's right is seen as a motivation for the common good and social progress. For Locke, the fundamental precepts of any system of human rights are life, health, liberty and prosperity. It is to secure this rights that governments are formed among men. Government always remains only an agent of society. It is not society itself. It is always an instrument of the people for the protection and promotion of their rights. Experience tell us that, in a society where injustice is not being upheld, where man's dignity is being dragged to the mud, where the liberty of man is not only comprehensively curtailed, but trampled upon; the idea of human rights becomes not only a mirage but also an illusion. The intellectual and especially the scientific achievements of the 17th century (including the materialism of Hobbes, the rationalism of Descartes, the pantheism of Spinoza, and the empiricism of Bacon and Locke) encouraged a distinctly modern belief in natural law and universal order and, during the 18th century, the so-called Age of Enlightenment, inspired by growing confidence in human reason. Particularly important were the writings of Locke, arguably the most important theorist of modern times. Locke argued in detail, that certain rights self-evidently pertain to individuals as human beings, among them are the right to life, liberty (freedom from arbitrary rule) and property. This liberal intellectual ferment exerted a profound influence in the Western world of the 18th and early 19th centuries. In sum, the idea of natural rights, forebear to the contemporary notion of human rights, played a key role in late 18th and early 19th centuries struggles against political absolutism. Although the heyday of natural rights proved short, the idea of rights nonetheless endured. The abolition of slavery, the implementation of factory legislation, the rise of popular education and trade unionism, the universal suffrage movement, these and other examples of reformist impulses afford ample evidence that the idea was not to be extinguished. But it was not until the rise and fall of Nazi Germany that the idea of human rights truly came into its own. Many of the gruesome atrocities committed by the Nazi regime, convinced many that law and morality can't be grounded in any purely idealist or utilitarian doctrine. Certain actions, are absolutely wrong, no matter what the circumstances. Locke's democratic theory had dimensions ranging over accounts of the moral equality of persons, what we might today describe as a political rather than a metaphysical approach to moral and political disagreement, and a strong defense of majority rule as the wellspring of institutional legitimacy. Locke is typically portrayed as a theorist of individual rights rather than of democracy. In the debate over the ideological origins of the American Revolution, for instance, the Lockcan view is contrasted, as a rights-centric one, with a civic republican interpretation of the Founders' self-understanding. In 1688, King James II was overthrown by a group of Parliamentarians. This was the result of what is known as the Glorious Revolution. Naturalist and political philosopher John Locke was present to witness these events and was so compelled by them, he wrote what is known as the Second Treatise on Government. In this, Locke would attempt to explain why King James II was justifiably overthrown, and why William III ascended him. He would define for us the "legitimate role of civil government". The best way to figure this out, was to imagine a state in which no government existed. Then by seeing that state, determine where necessary laws and governing bodies are needed. Locke described the role of civil government like this: "Political power, then being a right of making laws for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good." To Locke, a government existed, among other things, to promote public good, and to protect the life, liberty and property of its people. And the society must hold the power to instate a new government when necessary.
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