John Locke

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John Locke

John Locke, born on Aug. 29, 1632, in Somerset, England, was an English philosopher and political theorist. Locke was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he followed the traditional classical curriculum and then turned to the study of medicine and science, receiving a medical degree, but his interest in philosophy was reawakened by the study of Descartes. He then joined the household of Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the earl of Shaftesbury, as a personal physician at first, becoming a close friend and advisor. Shaftesbury secured for Locke a series of minor government appointments. In 1669, in one of his official capacities, Locke wrote a constitution for the proprietors of the Carolina Colony in North America, but it was never put into effect. In 1671 Locke began to write his greatest work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which took nearly twenty years to complete since he was deeply engaged in Shaftesbury's political affairs. In 1675, after the liberal Shaftesbury had fallen from favor, Locke went to France. In 1679 he returned to England, but in view of his opposition to the Roman Catholicism favored by the English monarchy at that time, he soon found it expedient to return to the Continent. From 1683 to 1688 he lived in Holland, and following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the restoration of Protestantism to favor, Locke returned once more to England. The new king, William III, appointed Locke to the Board of Trade in 1696, a position from which he resigned because of ill health in 1700. He died in Oates on October 28, 1704.
Locke's Essay is one of the classical documents of British empirical philosophy. His official concern is with epistemology, the theory of knowledge. Locke sees the universe as made up of material bodies, which in turn are made of insensible particles, which interact mechanically. There are also immaterial substances associated with human bodies. These bodies have sense organs, which when stimulated produce ideas of sensation. These ideas are operated on by our minds to produce ideas of reflection. These two types of ideas are the material of our thoughts, perception, and consciousness, which are all derived from experience; we can have no knowledge beyond our ideas. In perception, according to this view, we are not directly aware of physical objects; we are directly aware of the ideas that objects cause in us and that represen...

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