John Locke

John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, a key figure of the Enlightenment often called the "father of liberalism." He wrote major works like *A Letter Concerning Toleration* (1689), *Two Treatises of Government* (1689/90)—both published without his name—and *An Essay Concerning Human Understanding* (1689/90). In his writing on toleration, Locke argued that religion is a personal matter and that churches are voluntary groups, rejecting religious coercion and uniformity, which led to the idea of separating church and state. His *Two Treatises on Government* makes the case that government must be based on the consent of the people, and that citizens have a right to rebel against a tyrannical government that has lost that consent. These works are thought to have shaped the language Thomas Jefferson used when drafting the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.

Locke lived through the English Civil War, the Commonwealth after Charles I’s execution, the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, all of which shaped his political views and life choices. During the Interregnum, he studied at Westminster School and then won a place at Christ Church, Oxford. He spent fifteen years at Oxford as a student and later a tutor, pursuing medical and scientific interests with a circle of friends. In 1666, he became an associate of Lord Shaftesbury, a major political figure after the Restoration, and through Shaftesbury’s recommendation, Locke got government posts. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1668. When Shaftesbury lost royal favor and soon died, Locke went into political exile in the Netherlands for five years (1683–85), where he wrote some of his most important works. There he gained the patronage of Thomas Herbert, 8th Earl of Pembroke. Locke returned to England in 1689 accompanying Queen Mary II, and soon after published three of his most notable works. He served as a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations before retiring due to ill health. For his last fourteen years, he lived in the home of Sir Francis Masham and his wife, philosopher Lady Masham, whom Locke had known since she was young.

Considered one of the first British empiricists, following Francis Bacon, Locke is also central to social contract theory. His work greatly influenced epistemology and political philosophy. His ideas shaped Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, and the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory appear in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Internationally, his political and legal principles continue to influence limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.

Locke’s philosophy of mind is often seen as the origin of modern ideas about personal identity and the self, influencing later philosophers like Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. He proposed that at birth, the mind is a blank slate, or *tabula rasa*. Against Cartesian philosophy, which held that we have preexisting concepts, Locke argued we are born without innate ideas, and knowledge comes only from experience through sense perception—a view called empiricism. He is also credited with describing private property as a natural right, arguing that when a person mixes their labor with nature, resources can be taken from the common state of nature.

Locke was born on 29 August 1632 to Puritan parents in the village of Wrington, Somerset. His father, John Locke Sr. (born 1606), was 23 when he married Agnes Keene, age 33. Their first child, John, was born about a year later, when the couple lived in a house that had belonged to Agnes’s grandparents. The boy was baptized the same day at All Saints’ Church. During Henry VIII’s reign, Locke’s great-grandfather, Sir William Locke, was a wealthy merchant in luxury cloth. His son Nicholas Locke (d. 1648) continued the cloth trade, using the putting-out system: providing raw wool to weavers at home, then collecting and shipping the finished cloth. John Locke Sr., Nicholas’s oldest son, became an attorney. Soon after Locke’s birth, the family moved to the market town of Pensford, about seven miles south of Bristol, into a house Nicholas gave his lawyer son. Young Locke grew up in a rural Tudor house in Belluton, where his brothers were born: Peter, who died in infancy, and Thomas (b. 1637). Locke Sr. served as clerk to the Justices of the Peace in Chew Magna. One of the justices was Alexander Popham, a Member of Parliament for Bath and a wealthy landowner.

Locke was ten when the English Civil War broke out in 1642, pitting royalists supporting Charles I against Parliamentarian forces. As a Puritan, Locke’s father fought for the Parliamentarians, the winning side, serving as a captain in a cavalry unit under Alexander Popham. This political choice and personal connection later benefited his son. In 1647, young Locke’s provincial life changed when he became a student at Westminster School in London, sponsored by Popham.