- For other people by this name see John
Locke (disambiguation)
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 American law and government, allowing the colonists to justify revolution.
Locke's epistemology and philosophy of mind also had a great deal of significant influence well into the Enlightenment period. Locke has been placed in a group
called the British Empiricists, which includes David Hume and George
Berkeley. Locke is perhaps most often contrasted with Thomas
Hobbes.
Biography
Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, about ten miles from Bristol, England, in 1632. His father, a lawyer, served as a captain of cavalry for Parliament during the English Civil War. In
1647, Locke was sent to the prestigious Westminster School in London. After completing his studies
there, he obtained admission to the college of Christ
Church, Oxford. The dean of the college at the time was John Owen,
vice-chancellor of the university and also a Puritan. Although he was a capable student, Locke chafed under the undergraduate
curriculum of the time. He found reading modern philosophers, such as Rene
Descartes, more interesting than the classical material taught at the University.
Locke earned a bachelor's degree in 1656 and a master's degree in 1658. Although Locke never became a medical doctor, he earned a bachelor of medicine in 1674. He studied medicine extensively during his time at Oxford, working with such noted virtuosi as Robert Boyle, Thomas
Willis, Robert Hooke and Richard Lower. In 1666, he met Anthony Ashley
Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who had come to Oxford seeking treatment for a liver infection. Shaftesbury was impressed
with Locke and pressed him to become part of his retinue.
Locke had been looking for a career and in 1667 moved into Shaftesbury's home at Exeter House in London, ostensibly as the
household physican. In London Locke resumed his medical studies, under the tutelage of Thomas Sydenham. Sydenham had a major impact on Locke's natural philosophical thinking - an impact that
resonated deeply in Locke's writing of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Locke's medical knowledge was soon put to the test, since Shaftesbury's liver infection became life-threatening. Locke
coordinated the advice of several physicians and was likely instrumental in persuading Shaftesbury to undergo an operation (then
life-threatening itself) to remove the cyst. Shaftesbury survived and prospored, crediting Locke with saving his life.
It was in Shaftesbury's household, during 1671, that the meeting took place, described in the Epistle to the reader of the
Essay, which was the genesis of what would later become Essay. Two extant Drafts still survive from this period.
Shaftesbury, as a founder of the Whig movement, exerted great influence on Locke's
political ideas. Locke became involved in politics when Shaftesbury became Lord Chancellor in 1672. Following Shaftesbury's fall from favor in
1675, Locke spent some time traveling in southern France. He returned to England in 1679 when Shaftesbury's political fortunes
took a brief positive turn. However, Locke fled to the Netherlands in
1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot. Locke did not return to England until after the Glorious Revolution. The bulk of Locke's publishing took place after his return. He died in 1704 after a prolonged 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.
Writing
The influences of Locke's Puritan upbringing and his Whig political affiliation expressed themselves in his published
writings. Although widely regarded as an important influence on modern ideas of political liberty, Locke did not always express
ideas that match those of the present day.
Locke's first major published work was A Letter Concerning Toleration. Religious toleration within Great Britain was a subject
of great interest for Locke; he wrote several subsequent essays in its defense prior to his death. Locke's upbringing among
non-conformist Protestants made him sensitive to differing theological viewpoints. He recoiled, however, from what he saw as
the divisive character of some non-conformist sects. Locke became a strong supporter of the Church of England. By adopting a latitudinarian theological stance, Locke believed, the national church could serve as an instrument for
social harmony.
Locke is best known for two works, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Civil
Government.
The Essay was commenced in 1671, and as Locke himself described, was written in fits and starts over the next 18 years. It was
finally published in December 1689.
Though the exact dates of the Two Treatises composition are a matter of dispute, it is clear that the bulk of the writing took
place in the period from 1679-1682. It was therefore much more of a commentary on the exclusion crisis, than it was a
justification of the Glorious Revolutiuon of 1688. The book itself was published in 1689.
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 Second Treatise on Civil 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.
Locke and the United States
Supporters
Locke's work, particularly the concepts of liberty, later influenced the written
works of Thomas Jefferson and other Founding Fathers of the United States. In particular, the United States Declaration of
Independence drew upon many 18th century political ideas, derived from the works of both Locke and Montesquieu.
Detractors
According to A
People's History of the United States:
- In the Carolinas, the Fundamental Constitutions were written in the 1660s by John Locke, who is often considered the
philosophical father of the Founding Fathers and the American system. Locke's constitution set up a feudal-type aristocracy, in
which eight barons would own 40 percent of the colony's land, and only a baron could be governor. When the crown took direct
control of North Carolina, after a rebellion against the land arrangements, rich speculators seized half a million acres (2,000
km²) for themselves, monopolizing the good farming land near the coast. Poor people, desperate for land, squatted on bits of
farmland and fought all through the pre-Revolutionary period against the landlords' attempts to collect rent. (p. 47)
- Locke's statement of people's government was in support of a revolution in England for the free development of mercantile
capitalism at home and abroad. Locke himself regretted that the labor of poor children "is generally lost to the public till they
are twelve or fourteen years old" and suggested that all children over three, of families on relief, should attend 'working
schools" so they would be "from infancy inured to work." (73f)
Noam Chomsky adds:
- Locke held a sharply limited conception of freedom of expression. His Fundamental Constitution of Carolina barred those who
"speak anything in their religious assembly irreverently or seditiously of the government or governors, or of state matters." The
constitution guaranteed freedom for "speculative opinions in religion," but not for political opinions. "Locke would not even
have permitted people to discuss public affairs," Leonard Levy observes. The constitution provided further that "all manner of
comments and expositions on any part of these constitutions, or on any part of the common or statute laws of Carolines, are
absolutely prohibited." In drafting reasons for Parliament to terminate censorship in 1694, Locke offered no defense of freedom
of expression or thought, but only considerations of expediency and harm to commercial interests. With the threat of democracy
overcome and the libertarian rabble dispersed, censorship was permitted to lapse in England, because the "opinion-formers ...
censored themselves. Nothing got into print which frightened the men of property," Christopher Hill comments. In a
well-functioning state capitalist democracy like the United States, what might frighten the men of property is generally kept far
from the public eye -- sometimes, with quite astonishing success. [1] (http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c12-s03.html)
Locke also provided intellectual justifications for taking the land of the Native Americans. Bhikhu Parekh writes Locke "argued that
since the American Indians roamed freely over the land and did not enclose it ... [it] could be taken over without their
consent". When it was discovered that some land was enclosed, Locke argued that enclosure was not sufficient since the Native
Americans paused every three years to enrich the soil. This "irrational" behavior meant that the Native Americans were
uncivilized and thus did not deserve the land. "In Locke's view," Parekh comments, "the trouble with the Indians was that they
had very few desires and were easily contented." Nor did Native American society count as a legitimate government, since it
lacked "a single, unified and centralized system of authority" nor did they have a single language or culture. (Quotes from
Parekh, "Liberalism and Colonialism" in The decolonization of imagination.)
List of major works
Locke's epitaph
(translated from the Latin) "Stop Traveler! Near this place lieth John Locke. If you
ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar, he made his learning
subservient only to the cause of truth. This thou will learn from his writings, which will show thee everything else concerning
him, with greater truth, than the suspected praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to
propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to thee. Let his vices be buried together. As to an example of manners,
if you seek that, you have it in the Gospels; of vices, to wish you have one nowhere; if mortality, certainly, (and may it profit
thee,) thou hast one here and everywhere."
External links
Secondary literature
- Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknapp/Harvard University
Press, 1967. Enlarged Edition, 1992. Discusses influence of Locke and other thinkers upon American political thought.
- John Dunn, Locke Oxford University Press, 1984. A succinct introduction.
- John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the Two Treatises of
Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Introduced the interpretation which emphasizes the theological element
in Locke's political thought.
- Roland Hall (ed.) `Locke Studies' is an annual journal of research on John Locke (obtainable from the editor for £12; the
current volume is 300 pages).
- John W. Yolton (ed.), John Locke: Problems and Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Reassesses
Locke's political philosophy from different points of view.
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