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

    * (1689) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
    * (1690) A Letter Concerning Toleration
    * (1690) Second Treatise on Civil Government


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."