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John Locke ( August 29 1632 — October 28 1704) was a 17th century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. An Englishman, Locke's notions of a " government with the consent of the governed" and man's natural rights— life, liberty, and estate ( property)—had an enormous influence on the development of political philosophy. His ideas formed the basis for the concepts used in AmericanThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in lawThis article is about law in society. For other possible meanings, see law (disambiguation). Law (a loanword from Danish-Norwegian lov , in politics and jurisprudence, is a set of rules of conduct which mandate or proscribe (or both) specified relationshi and government, allowing the colonists to justify revolutionThis article is about revolution in the sense of a drastic change. For other meanings of the word, see revolution (disambiguation). A revolution is a relatively sudden and absolutely drastic change. This may be a change in the social or political institut. Locke's epistemology and philosophy of mind also had a great deal of significant influence well into the EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment (or The Enlightenment for short) was an intellectual movement in 18th-century Europe. The goal of the Enlightenment was to establish an authoritative ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge based on an "enlightened" rationality. The mov period. Locke has been placed in a group called the British Empiricists, which includes David HumeDavid Hume ( April 26, 1711 August 25, 1776), Scottish philosopher and historian and, with Adam Smith and Thomas Reid among others, one of the most important figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is sometimes regarded as the third and most radical o and George BerkeleyGeorge Berkeley (bark-lee) ( March 12, 1685 January 14, 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley was an influential Irish philosopher whose primary philosophical achievement is the advancement of what has come to be called subjective idealism, summed up in hi.1 Locke's life
Locke was born in Somerset, about ten miles from Bristol, England, in 1632. He studied medicine under Thomas Sydenham. When he was in his mid-thirties, he joined the household of Lord Shaftesbury in London and Oxford, where he is rumored to have been enamored of transvestism. Later he was to spend time in France and the Netherlands when England would not tolerate his liberal views. Some of his friends ended up in The Tower of London. He died in 1704 after a long slow decline in health.
Events that happened during Locke's lifetime include the English Restoration and the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. He did not quite see the Act of Union of 1707, though the office of King of England and King of Scotland had been held by the same person for some time. Constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy were in their infancy during Locke's time.
2 Locke's work
Locke's two main works, An Essay concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government were written more or less concurrently at the end of the seventeenth century.
In the Essay, Locke critiques the philosophy of innate ideas and builds a theory of the mind and knowledge that gives priority to the senses and experience. His adherence to this doctrine is what has led to him sometimes being called an empiricist rather than a rationalist such as his critic Leibniz, who wrote the New Essays on Human Understanding. Book II of the Essay sets out Locke's theory of ideas, including his distinction between passively acquired simple ideas, such as "red," "sweet," "round," etc., and actively built complex ideas, such as numbers, causes and effects, abstract ideas, ideas of substances, identity, and diversity. Locke also distinguishes between the truly existing primary qualities of bodies, like shape, motion and the arrangement of minute particles, and the secondary qualities that are "powers to produce various sensations in us" (Essay, II.viii.10) such as "red" and "sweet." These secondary qualities, Locke claims, are dependent on the primary qualities. In Chapter xxvii of book II Locke discusses personal identity, and the idea of a person. What he says here has shaped our thought and provoked debate ever since. Book III is concerned with language, and Book IV with knowledge, including intuition, mathematics, moral philosophy, natural philosophy ("science"), faith and opinion.
The Two Treatises of Government were highly subversive texts when they were written, and Locke was for a long time reluctant to admit authorship of them. They have now become cornerstones to political liberalism.
