John Locke (1632 – 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "Father of Liberalism". John Locke is considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon. John Locke is also equally important to social contract theory. John Locke's work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. John Locke is recognized as the founder of British empiricism and the author of the first systematic exposition and defense of political liberalism.
John Locke's writings influenced Voltaire and
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the
American Revolutionaries. John Locke's contributions to classical republicanism
and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of
Independence. John Locke’s political-legal principles 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.
John
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of
identity and the self, figuring prominently in the work of later philosophers
such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the
first to define the self through a continuity of consciousness. He postulated
that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate, or tabula rasa. Contrary to
Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are
born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by
experience derived from sense perception, a concept now known as empiricism.
Demonstrating the ideology of science in his observations, whereby something
must be capable of being tested repeatedly and that nothing is exempt from being
disproved, John Locke stated that "whatever I write, as soon as I discover it
not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire". Such
was John Locke's belief in empiricism.
John Locke exercised a profound influence on political
philosophy, in particular on modern liberalism. Michael Zuckert has argued that
Locke launched liberalism by tempering Hobbesian absolutism and clearly
separating the realms of Church and State. He had a strong influence on Voltaire
who called him "le sage Locke." His arguments concerning liberty and the social
contract later influenced the written works of Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. In
fact, one passage from the Second Treatise is reproduced verbatim in the
Declaration of Independence, the reference to a "long train of abuses." Such was
Locke's influence that Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Bacon, Locke and Newton… I
consider them as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any
exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have
been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences."
John Locke's theory of
association heavily influenced the subject matter of modern psychology. At the
time, Locke's recognition of two types of ideas, simple and complex—and, more
importantly, their interaction through associationism—inspired other
philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley, to revise and expand this
theory and apply it to explain how humans gain knowledge in the physical world.
John Locke's views on slavery were multifaceted and complex. Although he wrote against slavery in general in his writing, Locke was an investor and beneficiary of the slave trading Royal Africa Company. In addition, while secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, Locke participated in drafting the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which established a quasi-feudal aristocracy and gave Carolinian planters absolute power over their enslaved chattel property; the constitutions pledged that "every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves". Philosopher Martin Cohen noted that Locke, as a secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations and a member of the Board of Trade, was "one of just half a dozen men who created and supervised both the colonies and their iniquitous systems of servitude." - Cohen, Martin (2008), Philosophical Tales, Blackwell.