As the Wikipedia article on "Achilles heel" currently begins, "An Achilles' heel is a weakness in spite of overall strength." John Locke's Second Treatise on Government: Of Civil Government is an amazing achievement, that unlike Achilles, remains standing and strong to this day. But its weakest chapters are those where John Locke discusses slavery and land ownership. Even there, there a points where John Locke's arguments are very strong. But there are other points where he is trying to make a case that is difficult to make.

It has been very interesting for me to wrestle with both the strong and weak points of John Locke's treatment of slavery and land ownership in a series of blog posts every other week for six months. I have disagreed with John Locke much more in these posts than in the posts on earlier chapters that you can see laid out in "John Locke's State of Nature and State of War." Here are my posts reacting to John Locke's treatment of slavery and land ownership in his Second Treatise:

Chapter IV. Of Slavery

• Freedom Under Law Means All Are Subject to the Same Laws

• John Locke: Freedom is Life; Slavery Can Be Justified Only as a Reprieve from Deserved Death

• John Locke Treats the Bible as an Authority on Slavery

Chapter V. Of Property

• John Locke: Rivalry in Consumption Makes Private Property Unavoidable

• On John Locke's Labor Theory of Property

• John Locke: Property in the State of Nature

• Private Property Reduces Decision-Making Costs

• John Locke on How Things That Are No One's Property Become Someone's Property

• John Locke on Diminishing Marginal Utility as a Limit to Legitimately Claiming Works of Nature as Property

• John Locke's Song of Praise for Work

• John Locke Off Base with His Assumption That There Was Plenty of Land at the Time of Acquisition

• John Locke: Land Title is Needed to Protect Buildings and Improvements from Expropriation

• John Locke Pretends Land Ownership Goes Back to the Original Peopling of the Planet

• John Locke and the Share of Land

Update: Links to posts on earlier and later chapters can be found in these aggregator posts:

Posts on Chapters I-III:  John Locke's State of Nature and State of War 

Posts on Chapters IV-V:  On the Achilles Heel of John Locke's Second Treatise: Slavery and Land Ownership

Posts on Chapters VI-VII : John Locke Against Natural Hierarchy

Posts on Chapters VIII-XI:  John Locke's Argument for Limited Government