(1632-1704)

John Locke is sometimes called “the father of the enlightenment.” He was born August 29, 1632, the same year as Spinoza. His father was an attorney and a Puritan, who taught young John the value of representation and religious freedom. John’s father died of tuberculosis when John was 29, leaving him with a small inheritance.

John went to Oxford, received his Masters degree, and taught there. He later studied medicine and became the personal physician to the Earl of Shaftesbury (grandfather to the philosopher of the same title).

Beginning in 1675, Locke studied in France. When he returned, he found the political climate under James II less than congenial, and so moved to Holland. It was there that he wrote his great psychological work, Essay concerning Human Understanding.

In 1689, he returned to England after William and Mary took the throne from James II. There he published his works -- the Essay, his two Treatises on Government, and two letters concerning the need for religious tolerance. In 1691, he retired to a friend’s mansion, and died in 1704 at the age of 72.

His Treatises alone would assure him a place in history near the top. In them, he outlined the basics of representative government, including natural rights, consent of the governed, the protection of property, religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and the checks and balances between executive and legislative branches. His ideas would become the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Not bad.

Unlike Hobbes, Locke sees people as having a positive nature, one that contains instincts for social good and the ability to reason. Since our nature is positive, we should allow ourselves and others the freedom to develop that nature. For this reason, we must each surrender some degree of freedom in order that others may likewise be free to develop their potentials.

Laws are created, not to keep us from destroying each other, but to allow us to express our positive, rational natures. And so a government is legitimate only if its laws promote that which is our nature -- to be free and rational. And it can do this only if is based on the consent of the governed! If Hobbes reminds you of Skinner, Locke should remind you of Carl Rogers.

His Essay concerning Human Understanding attacked another popular idea of his time: Many scholars believed that the idea of God and the ideas of good and evil are planted in our minds at birth, perhaps by God himself. It was said that these ideas were innate. But when Locke looked at the variety of beliefs, non-beliefs, and moralities, he concluded that these things could not possibly be innate.

He admits, of course, that there are reflexes and instincts and the like, but these are just physiological sequences of movement, not ideas! There are some ideas, learned from experience, that are learned so early and reinforced so consistently, that they have the appearance of being innate. But that’s only an appearance!

In the course of arguing that there are no innate ideas, he also sets the stage for two future arguments, taken up by Berkeley and Hume. First, he notices that if we try to find matter, we see nothing but qualities that we attribute to matter -- but never matter itself. The idea of matter is not empirical! This would be elaborated by Berkeley.

Second, he notices that if we try to find mind, all we see are the qualities we attribute to mind. Never do we see, empirically, a mind at all! This would be elaborated by Hume.

Locke doesn’t make the leaps that Berkeley and Hume will, however. He is too practical for that. He says we are no doubt correct in believing in matter and mind. Life makes little sense without them. And yet, they are not empirically verifiable. He is sometimes called a metaphysical agnostic: He believes that there is mind and matter (and that they do interact, somehow), but no one can prove their existence.

Locke’s ideas were adopted enthusiastically by French philosophers as well as English (and American) thinkers. They would translate him into a revolutionary, and his philosophy of human nature into Sensationism and Mechanism.