John Locke, (born Aug. 29, 1632, Wrington, Somerset, Eng.—died Oct. 28, 1704, Oates, Essex), English philosopher. Educated at Oxford, principally in medicine and science, he later became physician and adviser to the future 3rd earl of Shaftesbury (1667–72). He moved to France, but after Shaftesbury’s fall in 1683 he fled to the Netherlands, where he supported the future William III. Locke returned to England after the Glorious Revolution (1688) to become commissioner of appeals, a post he held until his death. In his major philosophical work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), he argued that knowledge begins in sensation or introspection rather than in innate ideas, as the philosophers of rationalism held. From sensation and reflection the mind receives “ideas,” which are the material of knowledge. Some ideas represent actual qualities of objects (such as size, shape, or weight) and others perceived qualities, which do not exist in objects except as they affect observers (such as colour, taste, or smell); Locke called the former qualities “primary” and the latter “secondary.” Ideas that are given directly in sensation or reflection are simple, and simple ideas may be “compounded” to form complex ideas. Locke did not succeed in giving a clear account of the origin of the idea of substance (it is “a something-I-know-not-what”) or the idea of the “self,” though his account of personal identity in terms of memory was influential. In the philosophy of language, he identified the meanings of words with ideas rather than things. In Two Treatises of Government (1690), he defended a doctrine of natural rights and a conception of political authority as limited and conditional on the ruler’s fulfillment of his obligation to serve the public good. A classic formulation of the principles of political liberalism, this work influenced the American and French revolutions and the Constitution of the U.S. He is considered the founding figure of British empiricism.
John Locke Article
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Learn about the English philosopher John Locke and his major philosophical work Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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empiricism Summary
Empiricism, in philosophy, the view that all concepts originate in experience, that all concepts are about or applicable to things that can be experienced, or that all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience. This broad definition accords
universal Summary
Universal, in philosophy, an entity used in a certain type of metaphysical explanation of what it is for things to share a feature, attribute, or quality or to fall under the same type or natural kind. A pair of things resembling each other in any of these ways may be said to have (or to