Concept
Algernon Sidney
Overview
Algernon Sidney or Sydney (15 January 1623 – 7 December 1683) was an English politician, republican political theorist and colonel. A member of the middle part of the Long Parliament and commissioner of the trial of King Charles I of England, he opposed the king's execution. Sidney was later charged with plotting against Charles II, in part based on his most famous work, Discourses Concerning Government, which was used by the prosecution as a witness at his trial. He was executed for treason. After his death, Sidney was revered as a "Whig patriot—hero and martyr".
The works of Algernon Sidney, along with those of contemporary John Locke, are considered as cornerstones of western thought. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson stated that Locke's Second Treatise on Government and Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government contained the "general principles of liberty and rights of man in nature and society". Discourses Concerning Government cost Sidney his life. However, the ideas it put forth survived and ultimately culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England and the founding of the United States. Sidney directly opposed the theory of divine right of kings by suggesting ideas such as limited government, voluntary consent of the people and the right of citizens to alter or abolish a corrupt government. Discourses Concerning Government has been called "the textbook of the American revolution."
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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For generally, not he that hath skill in geometry, or any other science speculative, but only he that understandeth what conduceth to the good and government of the people, is called a wise man. Now that no author of sedition can be wise in this acceptation of the word, is sufficiently proved, in that it hath been already demonstrated, that no pretence of sedition can be right or just. And therefore the authors of…
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
States what Algernon Sidney is.
Inasmuch, however, as no government produces all possible beneficial effects, but all are attended with more or fewer inconveniences, and since these can not usually be combated by means drawn from the very causes which produce them, it would be often a much stronger recommendation of some practical arrangement, that it does not follow from what is called the general principle of the government, than that it does…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Algernon Sidney is.
To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in…
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
The author is tied to Algernon Sidney in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Algernon Sidney
Related ideas
- John Adams
- Friedrich Hayek
- Glorious Revolution
- Western philosophy
- Cato Institute
- James Madison
- John Locke
- American Revolution
- Political philosophy
- Republicanism
- Thomas Jefferson
- Libertarianism
- United States
- 17th century in philosophy
- Founding Fathers of the United States
- Reformed Christianity
- Absolute monarchy
- Robert Filmer
- American Revolutionary War
- Amsterdam
- Divine right of kings
Place in the tradition
Part of Niccolò Machiavelli.