Our paper examines John Locke’s legacy pertaining to the topic of human rights as it is exemplified and manifested in the contemporary philosophical discourse in the West. Besides core philosophical issues, we also notice the ethical and/or religious-ethical aspects of the current debates. Our assessment starts with identifying significant contextual influences on Locke’s thinking. In the next section, we provide a concise summary of Locke’s key contributions with implications for philosophy and ethics and the existing socio-political models of governance. The final section of our paper focuses on analyzing critical themes of the contemporary discourse related to Locke’s ideas (with the primary focus on property rights) in the West.

Our paper explores important topics related to John Locke’s thoughts on human rights and their viability for our contemporary discourse on the subject. We begin by exploring Locke’s education and epistemological reflections as factors that influenced his political philosophy. Next, we examine Locke’s views on the ‘state of nature,’ ‘law of nature,’ and ‘natural rights’ and show how his ideas have recently been appropriated (or contested) by Vietnamese and Western scholars. In the final section, we offer a critical assessment of the viability for the contemporary discourse of Locke’s metaphysical presuppositions from which he derives his notions of ‘natural rights.’