The Second Treatise is a work of political theory and also philosophy—an attempt, as Locke explains at the beginning of his work, to:
...set down what I take to be political power; that the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and shew the difference betwixt a ruler of a common-wealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.
As a work of political philosophy that focuses on the nature of political power, the Second Treatise sets it sights directly on two highly influential works of political philosophy that preceded it in the 17th century: the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes (1651) and the Patriarcha of Robert Filmer (1680). Both of these texts asserted that an absolute monarchy is a justifiable and even divinely ordained form of government, an idea that Locke found to be directly opposed to the principles of equality and consensus that he believed necessary for a well-functioning society.
