John Locke

Lore & Background

Locke was born on 29 August 1632 to Puritan parents in Wrington, Somerset. His father, John Locke, Sr., was an attorney who fought as a captain in the Parliamentarian forces during the English Civil War. Through the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, young Locke attended Westminster School in London, then Christ Church, Oxford, where he was irritated by the classical curriculum and found modern philosophers like Descartes more interesting. He was introduced to medicine and experimental philosophy through his friend Richard Lower, and worked with Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, and Robert Hooke. Locke was awarded a bachelor's degree in 1656, a master's in 1658, and a bachelor of medicine in 1675.

In 1666, Locke met Anthony Ashley Cooper (later Lord Shaftesbury), a key figure in English political life, and was appointed to governmental posts at Shaftesbury's recommendation. Locke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1668. When Shaftesbury fell from royal favour and died, Locke went into political exile for five years in the Netherlands (1683–85), where he wrote some of his most important works. He returned to England accompanying Queen Mary II in 1689, published three notable works soon after, served as a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations, then retired due to ill health. For the last fourteen years of his life, he lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham and his wife, philosopher Lady Masham.

Reader's Guide

Locke is considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following Francis Bacon, and is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, and the American Revolutionaries. The Two Treatises are believed to have influenced the language Thomas Jefferson chose in drafting the Declaration of Independence. Locke's political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.

Locke's philosophy of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of personal identity and the psychology of self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. He postulated that at birth the mind is a blank slate, or tabula rasa, maintaining that we are born without innate ideas and that knowledge is determined only by experience derived from sense perception—a concept now known as empiricism. Locke is often credited for describing private property as a natural right, arguing that when a person mixes their labour with nature, resources can be removed from the common state of nature.

Did You Know?

• Locke was baptised the same day as his birth in All Saints' Church.
• He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1668.
• Locke's Two Treatises of Government were published anonymously.
• He spent five years in political exile in the Netherlands (1683–85).

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression." — John Locke "To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues." — John Locke "Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance." — John Locke "Journal entry (25 January 1676), quoted in John Lough (ed.), Locke's Travels in France 1675-1679 (Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 20." — John Locke