1. Locke asked first what state man would be in if there were no government, and he found that human beings originated in the state of nature, the state that existed before human beings came together to form a society and a government. Locke saw this state of nature is placing the individual into a state of perfect freedom, with no necessity to ask any other person before determining his or her own actions or disposing of their own property. Property was an essential element in Locke's thinking, with the relationship of the individual to his property as being of paramount importance. The ownership of property was seen as a fundamental right, meaning that it was a right born in the state of nature. For Locke, the defense of individual liberty is inseparable from the defense of private property.
The individual in society does not have absolute freedom, showing that something has been lost from the state of nature. Locke sees human beings as having agreed to give up certain rights and powers through some form of agreement. Society is thus formed when men cede certain powers to a central authority. Private property rights are to be protected by this state that has been created. Locke traces the concept of private property from the time when God gave the world to Adam and his posterity. Property for Locke seems to symbolize rights in concrete form, as something a human being can conceive of as distinguishable from him or herself even though they may be also seen as a part of the self. Politics also derives from the conjunction of property and rights.
2. Women were not given much importance by many of the political philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rousseau, in considering the role of man in the state of nature, said essentially that all men needed then was food, a place to stay, and a woman, placing women in the position of a form of property to satisfy a need. Rousseau emphasizes women as dependen...