The Locke Game

John Locke's political philosophy is based on certain assumptions about the nature of the world and about the strategies that human beings adopt in the world. One way to understand and evaluate these assumptions is to work through a simulation exercise designed to illustrate Locke's conception ofpolitical life. In this article we describe a game based on "Of Property," Chapter V of Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government. The exercise is designed for a group of fifteen to thirty players who have no previous exposure to Locke's philosophy; it can be played and discussed in seventy-five minutes