John Locke
English philosopher
born Aug. 29, 1632, Wrington, Somerset, Eng.
died Oct. 28, 1704, High Laver, Essex, Eng.
Main
English philosopher whose works lie at the foundation of modern
philosophical empiricism and political liberalism. He was an inspirer of
both the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United
States. His philosophical thinking was close to that of the founders of
modern science, especially Robert Boyle, Sir Isaac Newton, and other
members of the Royal Society. His political thought was grounded in the
notion of a social contract between citizens and in the importance of
toleration, especially in matters of religion. Much of what he advocated
in the realm of politics was accepted in England after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688–89 and in the United States after the country’s
declaration of independence in 1776.
Early years
Locke’s family was sympathetic to Puritanism but remained within the
Church of England, a situation that coloured Locke’s later life and
thinking. Raised in Pensford, near Bristol, Locke was 10 years old at
the start of the English Civil Wars between the monarchy of Charles I
and parliamentary forces under the eventual leadership of Oliver
Cromwell. Locke’s father, a lawyer, served as a captain in the cavalry
of the parliamentarians and saw some limited action. From an early age,
one may thus assume, Locke rejected any claim by the king to have a
divine right to rule.
After the first Civil War ended in 1646, Locke’s father was able to
obtain for his son, who had evidently shown academic ability, a place at
Westminster School in distant London. It was to this already famous
institution that Locke went in 1647, at age 14. Although the school had
been taken over by the new republican government, its headmaster,
Richard Busby (himself a distinguished scholar), was a royalist. For
four years Locke remained under Busby’s instruction and control (Busby
was a strong disciplinarian who much favoured the birch). In January
1649, just half a mile away from Westminster School, Charles was
beheaded on the order of Cromwell. The boys were not allowed to attend
the execution, though they were undoubtedly well aware of the events
taking place nearby.
The curriculum of Westminster centred on Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
Arabic, mathematics, and geography. In 1650 Locke was elected a King’s
Scholar, an academic honour and financial benefit that enabled him to
buy several books, primarily classic texts in Greek and Latin. Although
Locke was evidently a good student, he did not enjoy his schooling; in
later life he attacked boarding schools for their overemphasis on
corporal punishment and for the uncivil behaviour of pupils. In his
enormously influential work Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693),
he would argue for the superiority of private tutoring for the education
of young gentlemen (see below Other works).
Oxford
In the autumn of 1652 Locke, at the comparatively late age of 20,
entered Christ Church, the largest of the colleges of the University of
Oxford and the seat of the court of Charles I during the Civil Wars. But
the royalist days of Oxford were now behind it, and Cromwell’s Puritan
followers filled most of the positions. Cromwell himself was chancellor,
and John Owen, Cromwell’s former chaplain, was vice-chancellor and dean.
Owen and Cromwell were, however, concerned to restore the university to
normality as soon as possible, and this they largely succeeded in doing.
Locke later reported that he found the undergraduate curriculum at
Oxford dull and unstimulating. It was still largely that of the medieval
university, focusing on Aristotle (especially his logic) and largely
ignoring important new ideas about the nature and origins of knowledge
that had been developed in writings by Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René
Descartes (1596–1650), and other natural philosophers. Although their
works were not on the official syllabus, Locke was soon reading them. He
graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1656 and a master’s two years
later, about which time he was elected a student (the equivalent of
fellow) of Christ Church. At Oxford Locke made contact with some
advocates of the new science, including Bishop John Wilkins, the
astronomer and architect Christopher Wren, the physicians Thomas Willis
and Richard Lower, the physicist Robert Hooke, and, most important of
all, the eminent natural philosopher and theologian Robert Boyle. Locke
attended classes in iatrochemistry (the early application of chemistry
to medicine), and before long he was collaborating with Boyle on
important medical research on human blood. Medicine from now on was to
play a central role in his life.
The restoration of the English monarchy in 1660 was a mixed blessing
for Locke. It led many of his scientific collaborators to return to
London, where they soon founded the Royal Society, which provided the
stimulus for much scientific research. But in Oxford the new freedom
from Puritan control encouraged unruly behaviour and religious
enthusiasms among the undergraduates. These excesses led Locke to be
wary of rapid social change, an attitude that no doubt partly reflected
his own childhood during the Civil Wars.
In his first substantial political work, Two Tracts on Government
(composed in 1660 but not published until 1967), Locke defended a very
conservative position: in the interest of political stability, a
government is justified in legislating on any matter of religion that is
not directly relevant to the essential beliefs of Christianity. This
view, a response to the perceived threat of anarchy posed by sectarian
differences, was diametrically opposed to the doctrine that he would
later expound in Two Treatises of Government (1690).
In 1663 Locke was appointed senior censor in Christ Church, a post
that required him to supervise the studies and discipline of
undergraduates and to give a series of lectures. The resulting Essays on
the Law of Nature (first published in 1954) constitutes an early
statement of his philosophical views, many of which he retained more or
less unchanged for the rest of his life. Of these probably the two most
important were, first, his commitment to a law of nature, a natural
moral law that underpins the rightness or wrongness of all human
conduct, and, second, his subscription to the empiricist principle that
all knowledge, including moral knowledge, is derived from experience and
therefore not innate. These claims were to be central to his mature
philosophy, both with regard to political theory and epistemology.
Association with Shaftesbury
In 1666 Locke was introduced to Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, later 1st
earl of Shaftesbury, by a mutual acquaintance. As a member and
eventually the leader of a group of opposition politicians known as the
Whigs, Ashley was one of the most powerful figures in England in the
first two decades after the Restoration. Ashley was so impressed with
Locke at their first meeting that in the following year he asked him to
join his London household in Exeter House in the Strand as his aide and
personal physician, though Locke did not then have a degree in medicine.
Politically, Ashley stood for constitutional monarchy, a Protestant
succession, civil liberty, toleration in religion, the rule of
Parliament, and the economic expansion of England. Locke either shared
or soon came to share all these objectives with him, and it was not long
before a deep—and for each an important—mutual understanding existed
between them. Locke drafted papers on toleration, possibly for Ashley to
use in parliamentary speeches. In his capacity as a physician, Locke was
involved in a remarkable operation to insert a silver tube into a tumour
on Ashley’s liver, which allowed it to be drained on a regular basis and
relieved him of much pain. It remained in place for the remainder of
Ashley’s life. Locke also found a suitable bride for Ashley’s son.
By 1668 Locke had become a fellow of the Royal Society and was
conducting medical research with his friend Thomas Sydenham, the most
distinguished physician of the period. Although Locke was undoubtedly
the junior partner in their collaboration, they worked together to
produce important research based on careful observation and a minimum of
speculation. The method that Locke acquired and helped to develop in
this work reinforced his commitment to philosophical empiricism. But it
was not only medicine that kept Locke busy, for he was appointed by
Ashley as secretary to the lords proprietors of Carolina, whose function
was to promote the establishment of the North American colony. In that
role Locke helped to draft The Fundamental Constitutions for the
Government of Carolina (1669), which, among other provisions, guaranteed
freedom of religion for all save atheists.
Throughout his time in Exeter House, Locke kept in close contact with
his friends. Indeed, the long gestation of his most important
philosophical work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689),
began at a meeting with friends in his rooms, probably in February 1671.
The group had gathered to consider questions of morality and revealed
religion (knowledge of God derived through revelation). Locke pointed
out that, before they could make progress, they would need to consider
the prior question of what the human mind is (and is not) capable of
comprehending. It was agreed that Locke should prepare a paper on the
topic for their next meeting, and it was this paper that became the
first draft of his great work.
Exile in France
In 1672 Ashley was raised to the peerage as the 1st earl of Shaftesbury,
and at the end of that year he was appointed lord chancellor of England.
He was soon dismissed, however, having lost favour with Charles II. For
a time Shaftesbury and Locke were in real danger, and it was partly for
this reason that Locke traveled to France in 1675. By this time he had
received his degree of bachelor of medicine from Oxford and been
appointed to a medical studentship at Christ Church.
Locke remained in France for nearly four years (1675–79), spending
much time in Paris and Montpelier; the latter possessed a large
Protestant minority and the most important medical school in Europe,
both of which were strong attractions for Locke. He made many friends in
the Protestant community, including some leading intellectuals. His
reading, on the other hand, was dominated by the works of French
Catholic philosophers. But it was his medical interests that were the
major theme of the journals he kept from this period. He was struck by
the poverty of the local population and contrasted this unfavourably
with conditions in England and with the vast amounts that the French
king (Louis XIV) was spending on the Palace of Versailles. From time to
time Locke turned to philosophical questions and added notes to his
journal, some of which eventually found a place in An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding.
Back in England, Shaftesbury had been imprisoned for a year in the
Tower of London but was released in February 1678. By the time Locke
returned to England in 1679, Shaftesbury had been restored to favour as
lord president of the Privy Council. The country, however, was torn by
dissension over the exclusion controversy—the debate over whether a law
could be passed to forbid (exclude) the succession of Charles II’s
brother James, a Roman Catholic, to the English throne. Shaftesbury and
Locke strongly supported exclusion. The controversy reached its apex in
the hysteria of the so-called Popish Plot, a supposed Catholic
conspiracy to assassinate Charles and replace him with James. The
existence of the plot was widely accepted and resulted in the execution
of many innocent people before its fabricator, the Anglican priest Titus
Oates, was discredited.
Two Treatises of Government
When Shaftesbury failed to reconcile the interests of the king and
Parliament, he was dismissed; in 1681 he was arrested, tried, and
finally acquitted of treason by a London jury. A year later he fled to
Holland, where in 1683 he died. None of Shaftesbury’s known friends was
now safe in England. Locke himself, who was being closely watched,
crossed to Holland in September 1683.
Out of this context emerged Locke’s major work in political
philosophy, Two Treatises of Government (1690). Although scholars
disagree over the exact date of its composition, it is certain that it
was substantially composed before Locke fled to Holland. In this respect
the Two Treatises was a response to the political situation as it
existed in England at the time of the exclusion controversy, though its
message was of much more lasting significance. In the preface to the
work, composed at a later date, Locke makes clear that the arguments of
the two treatises are continuous and that the whole constitutes a
justification of the Glorious Revolution, which brought the Protestant
William III and Mary II to the throne following the flight of James II
to France.
It should be noted that Locke’s political philosophy was guided by
his deeply held religious commitments. Throughout his life he accepted
the existence of a creating God and the notion that all humans are God’s
servants in virtue of that relationship. God created humans for a
certain purpose, namely to live a life according to his laws and thus to
inherit eternal salvation; most importantly for Locke’s philosophy, God
gave humans just those intellectual and other abilities necessary to
achieve this end. Thus, humans, using the capacity of reason, are able
to discover that God exists, to identify his laws and the duties they
entail, and to acquire sufficient knowledge to perform their duties and
thereby to lead a happy and successful life. They can come to recognize
that some actions, such as failing to care for one’s offspring or to
keep one’s contracts, are morally reprehensible and contrary to natural
law, which is identical to the law of God. Other specific moral laws can
be discovered or known only through revelation—e.g., by reading the
Bible or the Qurʾān.
The essentially Protestant Christian framework of Locke’s philosophy
meant that his attitude toward Roman Catholicism would always be
hostile. He rejected the claim of papal infallibility (how could it ever
be proved?), and he feared the political dimensions of Catholicism as a
threat to English autonomy, especially after Louis XIV in 1685 revoked
the Edict of Nantes, which had granted religious liberty to the
Protestant Huguenots.
Two Treatises of Government » The first treatise
The first treatise was aimed squarely at the work of another
17th-century political theorist, Sir Robert Filmer, whose Patriarcha
(1680, though probably written in the 1630s) defended the theory of
divine right of kings: the authority of every king is divinely
sanctioned by his descent from Adam—according to the Bible, the first
king and the father of humanity. Locke claims that Filmer’s doctrine
defies “common sense.” The right to rule by descent from Adam’s first
grant could not be supported by any historical record or any other
evidence, and any contract that God and Adam entered into would not be
binding on remote descendants thousands of years later, even if a line
of descent could be identified. His refutation was widely accepted as
decisive, and in any event the theory of the divine right of kings
ceased to be taken seriously in England after 1688.
Two Treatises of Government » The second treatise
Locke’s importance as a political philosopher lies in the argument of
the second treatise. He begins by defining political power as a right of making Laws with Penalties of Death, and consequently all
less Penalties, for the Regulating and Preserving of Property, and of
employing the force of the Community, in the Execution of such Laws and
in defence of the Common-wealth from Foreign Injury, and all this only
for the Publick Good.
Two Treatises of Government » The second treatise » The state of nature
and the social contract
Locke’s definition of political power has an immediate moral dimension.
It is a “right” of making laws and enforcing them for “the public good.”
Power for Locke never simply means “capacity” but always “morally
sanctioned capacity.” Morality pervades the whole arrangement of
society, and it is this fact, tautologically, that makes society
legitimate.
Locke’s account of political society is based on a hypothetical
consideration of the human condition before the beginning of communal
life. In this “state of nature,” humans are entirely free. But this
freedom is not a state of complete license, because it is set within the
bounds of the law of nature. It is a state of equality, which is itself
a central element of Locke’s account. In marked contrast to Filmer’s
world, there is no natural hierarchy among humans. Each person is
naturally free and equal under the law of nature, subject only to the
will of “the infinitely wise Maker.” Each person, moreover, is required
to enforce as well as to obey this law. It is this duty that gives to
humans the right to punish offenders. But in such a state of nature, it
is obvious that placing the right to punish in each person’s hands may
lead to injustice and violence. This can be remedied if humans enter
into a contract with each other to recognize by common consent a civil
government with the power to enforce the law of nature among the
citizens of that state. Although any contract is legitimate as long as
it does not infringe upon the law of nature, it often happens that a
contract can be enforced only if there is some higher human authority to
require compliance with it. It is a primary function of society to set
up the framework in which legitimate contracts, freely entered into, may
be enforced, a state of affairs much more difficult to guarantee in the
state of nature and outside civil society.
Two Treatises of Government » The second treatise » Property
Before discussing the creation of political society in greater detail,
Locke provides a lengthy account of his notion of property, which is of
central importance to his political theory. Each person, according to
Locke, has property in his own person—that is, each person literally
owns his own body. Other people may not use a person’s body for any
purpose without his permission. But one can acquire property beyond
one’s own body through labour. By mixing one’s labour with objects in
the world, one acquires a right to the fruits of that work. If one’s
labour turns a barren field into crops or a pile of wood into a house,
then the valuable product of that labour, the crops or the house,
becomes one’s property. Locke’s view was a forerunner of the labour
theory of value, which was expounded in different forms by the
19th-century economists David Ricardo and Karl Marx (see also classical
economics).
Clearly, each person is entitled to as much of the product of his
labour as he needs to survive. But, according to Locke, in the state of
nature one is not entitled to hoard surplus produce—one must share it
with those less fortunate. God has “given the World to Men in common…to
make use of to the best advantage of Life, and convenience.” The
introduction of money, while radically changing the economic base of
society, was itself a contingent development, for money has no intrinsic
value but depends for its utility only on convention.
Locke’s account of property and how it comes to be owned faces
difficult problems. For example, it is far from clear how much labour is
required to turn any given unowned object into a piece of private
property. In the case of a piece of land, for example, is it sufficient
merely to put a fence around it? Or must it be plowed as well? There is,
nevertheless, something intuitively powerful in the notion that it is
activity, or work, that grants one a property right in something.
Two Treatises of Government » The second treatise » Organization of
government
Locke returns to political society in Chapter VIII of the second
treatise. In the community created by the social contract, the will of
the majority should prevail, subject to the law of nature. The
legislative body is central, but it cannot create laws that violate the
law of nature, because the enforcement of the natural law regarding
life, liberty, and property is the rationale of the whole system. Laws
must apply equitably to all citizens and not favour particular sectional
interests, and there should be a division of legislative, executive, and
judicial powers. The legislature may, with the agreement of the
majority, impose such taxes as are required to fulfill the ends of the
state—including, of course, its defense. If the executive power fails to
provide the conditions under which the people can enjoy their rights
under natural law, then the people are entitled to remove him, by force
if necessary. Thus, revolution, in extremis, is permissible—as Locke
obviously thought it was in 1688.
The significance of Locke’s vision of political society can scarcely
be exaggerated. His integration of individualism within the framework of
the law of nature and his account of the origins and limits of
legitimate government authority inspired the U.S. Declaration of
Independence (1776) and the broad outlines of the system of government
adopted in the U.S. Constitution. George Washington, the first president
of the United States, once described Locke as “the greatest man who had
ever lived.” In France too, Lockean principles found clear expression in
the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and other
justifications of the French Revolution of 1789.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Locke remained in Holland for more than five years (1683–89). While
there he made new and important friends and associated with other exiles
from England. He also wrote his first Letter on Toleration, published
anonymously in Latin in 1689, and completed An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Theory of ideas
A dominant theme of the Essay is the question with which the original
discussion in Exeter House began: What is the capacity of the human mind
for understanding and knowledge? In his prefatory chapter, Locke
explains that the Essay is not offered as a contribution to knowledge
itself but as a means of clearing away some of the intellectual rubbish
that stands in the way of knowledge. He had in mind not only the
medieval Scholastics and their followers but also some of his older
contemporaries. The Scholastics—those who took Aristotle and his
commentators to be the source of all philosophical knowledge and who
still dominated teaching in universities throughout Europe—were guilty
of introducing technical terms into philosophy (such as substantial
form, vegetative soul, abhorrence of a vacuum, and intentional species)
that upon examination had no clear sense—or, more often, no sense at
all. Locke saw the Scholastics as an enemy that had to be defeated
before his own account of knowledge could be widely accepted, something
about which he was entirely right.
Locke begins the Essay by repudiating the view that certain kinds of
knowledge—knowledge of the existence of God, of certain moral truths, or
of the laws of logic or mathematics—are innate, imprinted on the human
mind at its creation. (The doctrine of innate ideas, which was widely
held to justify religious and moral claims, had its origins in the
philosophy of Plato [428/427–348/347bce], who was still a powerful force
in 17th-century English philosophy.) Locke argues to the contrary that
an idea cannot be said to be “in the mind” until one is conscious of it.
But human infants have no conception of God or of moral, logical, or
mathematical truths, and to suppose that they do, despite obvious
evidence to the contrary, is merely an unwarranted assumption to save a
position. Furthermore, travelers to distant lands have reported
encounters with people who have no conception of God and who think it
morally justified to eat their enemies. Such diversity of religious and
moral opinion cannot not be explained by the doctrine of innate ideas
but can be explained, Locke held, on his own account of the origins of
ideas.
In Book II he turns to that positive account. He begins by claiming
that the sources of all knowledge are, first, sense experience (the red
colour of a rose, the ringing sound of a bell, the taste of salt, and so
on) and, second, “reflection” (one’s awareness that one is thinking,
that one is happy or sad, that one is having a certain sensation, and so
on). These are not themselves, however, instances of knowledge in the
strict sense, but they provide the mind with the materials of knowledge.
Locke calls the materials so provided “ideas.” Ideas are objects “before
the mind,” not in the sense that they are physical objects but in the
sense that they represent physical objects to consciousness.
All ideas are either simple or complex. All simple ideas are derived
from sense experience, and all complex ideas are derived from the
combination (“compounding”) of simple and complex ideas by the mind.
Whereas complex ideas can be analyzed, or broken down, into the simple
or complex ideas of which they are composed, simple ideas cannot be. The
complex idea of a snowball, for example, can be analyzed into the simple
ideas of whiteness, roundness, and solidity (among possibly others), but
none of the latter ideas can be analyzed into anything simpler. In
Locke’s view, therefore, a major function of philosophical inquiry is
the analysis of the meanings of terms through the identification of the
ideas that give rise to them. The project of analyzing supposedly
complex ideas (or concepts) subsequently became an important theme in
philosophy, especially within the analytic tradition, which began at the
turn of the 20th century and became dominant at Cambridge, Oxford, and
many other universities, especially in the English-speaking world.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Primary and secondary
qualities
In the course of his account, Locke raises a host of related issues,
many of which have since been the source of much debate. One of them is
his illuminating distinction between the “primary” and “secondary”
qualities of physical objects. Primary qualities include size, shape,
weight, and solidity, among others, and secondary qualities include
colour, taste, and smell. Ideas of primary qualities resemble the
qualities as they are in the object—as one’s idea of the roundness of a
snowball resembles the roundness of the snowball itself. However, ideas
of secondary qualities do not resemble any property in the object; they
are instead a product of the power that the object has to cause certain
kinds of ideas in the mind of the perceiver. Thus, the whiteness of the
snowball is merely an idea produced in the mind by the interaction
between light, the primary qualities of the snowball, and the
perceiver’s sense organs.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Personal identity
Locke discussed another problem that had not before received sustained
attention: that of personal identity. Assuming one is the same person as
the person who existed last week or the person who was born many years
ago, what fact makes this so? Locke was careful to distinguish the
notion of sameness of person from the related notions of sameness of
body and sameness of man, or human being. Sameness of body requires
identity of matter, and sameness of human being depends on continuity of
life (as would the sameness of a certain oak tree from acorn to sapling
to maturity); but sameness of person requires something else. Locke’s
proposal was that personal identity consists of continuity of
consciousness. One is the same person as the person who existed last
week or many years ago if one has memories of the earlier person’s
conscious experiences. Locke’s account of personal identity became a
standard (and highly contested) position in subsequent discussions.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Association of ideas
A further influential section of Book II is Locke’s treatment of the
association of ideas. Ideas, Locke observes, can become linked in the
mind in such a way that having one idea immediately leads one to form
another idea, even though the two ideas are not necessarily connected
with each other. Instead, they are linked through their having been
experienced together on numerous occasions in the past. The
psychological tendency to associate ideas through experience, Locke
says, has important implications for the education of children. In order
to learn to adopt good habits and to avoid bad ones, children must be
made to associate rewards with good behaviour and punishments with bad
behaviour. Investigations into the associations that people make between
ideas can reveal much about how human beings think. Through his
influence on researchers such as the English physician David Hartley
(1705–57), Locke contributed significantly to the development of the
theory of associationism, or associationist psychology, in the 18th
century. Association has remained a central topic of inquiry in
psychology ever since.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Language
Having shown to his satisfaction that no idea requires for its
explanation the hypothesis of innate ideas, Locke proceeds in Book III
to examine the role of language in human mental life. His discussion is
the first sustained philosophical inquiry in modern times into the
notion of linguistic meaning. As elsewhere, he begins with rather simple
and obvious claims but quickly proceeds to complex and contentious ones.
Words, Locke says, stand for ideas in the mind of the person who uses
them. It is by the use of words that people convey their necessarily
private thoughts to each other. In addition, Locke insists, nothing
exists except particulars, or individual things. There are, for example,
many triangular things and many red things, but there is no general
quality or property, over and above these things, that may be called
“triangle” (“triangularity”) or “red” (“redness”) (see universal).
Nevertheless, a large number of words are general in their application,
applying to many particular things at once. Thus, words must be labels
for both ideas of particular things (particular ideas) and ideas of
general things (general ideas). The problem is, if everything that
exists is a particular, where do general ideas come from?
Locke’s answer is that ideas become general through the process of
abstraction. The general idea of a triangle, for example, is the result
of abstracting from the properties of specific triangles only the
residue of qualities that all triangles have in common—that is, having
three straight sides. Although there are enormous problems with this
account, alternatives to it are also fraught with difficulties.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding » Knowledge
In Book IV of the Essay, Locke reaches the putative heart of his
inquiry, the nature and extent of human knowledge. His precise
definition of knowledge entails that very few things actually count as
such for him. In general, he excludes knowledge claims in which there is
no evident connection or exclusion between the ideas of which the claim
is composed. Thus, it is possible to know that white is not black
whenever one has the ideas of white and black together (as when one
looks at a printed page), and it is possible to know that the three
angles of a triangle equal two right angles if one knows the relevant
Euclidean proof. But it is not possible to know that the next stone one
drops will fall downward or that the next glass of water one drinks will
quench one’s thirst, even though psychologically one has every
expectation, through the association of ideas, that it will. These are
cases only of probability, not knowledge—as indeed is virtually the
whole of scientific knowledge, excluding mathematics. Not that such
probable claims are unimportant: humans would be incapable of dealing
with the world except on the assumption that such claims are true. But
for Locke they fall short of genuine knowledge.
There are, however, some very important things that can be known. For
example, Locke agreed with Descartes that each person can know
immediately and without appeal to any further evidence that he exists at
the time that he considers it. One can also know immediately that the
colour of the print on a page is different from the colour of the page
itself—i.e., that black is not white—and that two is greater than one.
It can also be proved from self-evident truths by valid argument (by an
argument whose conclusion cannot be false if its premises are true) that
a first cause, or God, must exist. Various moral claims also can be
demonstrated—e.g., that parents have a duty to care for their children
and that one should honour one’s contracts. People often make mistakes
or poor judgments in their dealings with the world or each other because
they are unclear about the concepts they use or because they fail to
analyze the relevant ideas. Another great cause of confusion, however,
is the human propensity to succumb to what Locke calls “Enthusiasm,” the
adoption on logically inadequate grounds of claims that one is already
disposed to accept.
One major problem that the Essay appeared to raise is that if ideas
are indeed the immediate objects of experience, how is it possible to
know that there is anything beyond them—e.g., ordinary physical objects?
Locke’s answer to this problem, insofar as he recognized it as a
problem, appears to have been that, because perception is a natural
process and thus ordained by God, it cannot be generally misleading
about the ontology of the universe. In the more skeptical age of the
18th century, this argument became less and less convincing. This issue
dominated epistemology in the 18th century.
The Essay’s influence was enormous, perhaps as great as that of any
other philosophical work apart from those of Plato and Aristotle. Its
importance in the English-speaking world of the 18th century can
scarcely be overstated. Along with the works of Descartes, it
constitutes the foundation of modern Western philosophy.
Other works
Locke’s writings were not confined to political philosophy and
epistemology. Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), for example,
remains a standard source in the philosophy of education. It developed
out of a series of letters that Locke had written from Holland to his
friend Edward Clarke concerning the education of Clarke’s son, who was
destined to be a gentleman but not necessarily a scholar. It emphasizes
the importance of both physical and mental development—both exercise and
study. The first requirement is to instill virtue, wisdom, and good
manners. This is to be followed by book learning. For the latter, Locke
gives a list of recommended texts on Latin, French, mathematics,
geography, and history, as well as civil law, philosophy, and natural
science. There should also be plenty of scope for recreation, including
dancing and riding.
Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity(1695) is the most
important of his many theological writings. Central to all of them is
his belief that every individual has within him the abilities necessary
to comprehend his duty and to achieve salvation with the aid of the
Scriptures. Locke was constantly trying to steer a course that would
allow individuals to accept the essential doctrines of Christianity
while retaining a certain freedom of conscience. According to Locke, all
Christians must accept Jesus as the Messiah and live in accordance with
his teachings. Within this minimum framework, however, differences of
worship could and should be tolerated. Locke was thus in many ways close
to the Latitudinarian movement and other liberal theological trends. His
influence on Protestant Christian thought for at least the next century
was substantial.
Locke wrote no major work of moral philosophy. Although he sometimes
claimed that it would be possible in principle to produce a deductive
system of ethics comparable to Euclid’s geometry, he never actually
produced one, and there is no evidence that he ever gave the matter more
than minimal attention. He was quite sure, however, that through the use
of reason human beings can gain access to and knowledge of basic moral
truths, which ultimately arise from a moral order in “the soil of human
nature.” As he expressed the point in Essays on the Law of Nature
(1664), an early work expressing a position from which he never
diverted, since man has been made such as he is, equipped with reason and his
other faculties and destined for this mode of life, there necessarily
result from his inborn constitution some definite duties for him, which
cannot be other than they are.
Just as one can discover from the nature of the triangle that its
angles equal two right angles, so this moral order can be discovered by
reason and is within the grasp of all human beings.
Last years and influence
Locke remained in Holland until James II was overthrown in the Glorious
Revolution. Indeed, Locke himself in February 1689 crossed the English
Channel in the party that accompanied the princess of Orange, who was
soon crowned Queen Mary II of England. Upon his return he became
actively involved in various political projects, including helping to
draft the English Bill of Rights, though the version eventually adopted
by Parliament did not go as far as he wanted in matters of religious
toleration. He was offered a senior diplomatic post by William but
declined. His health was rarely good, and he suffered especially in the
smoky atmosphere of London. He was therefore very happy to accept the
offer of his close friend Damaris Masham, herself a philosopher and the
daughter of Ralph Cudworth, to make his home with her family at Oates in
High Laver, Essex. There he spent his last years revising the Essay and
other works, entertaining friends, including Newton, and responding at
length to his critics. After a lengthy period of poor health, he died
while Damaris read him the Bible. He was buried in High Laver church.
As a final comment on his achievement, it may be said that, in many
ways, to read Locke’s works is the best available introduction to the
intellectual environment of the modern Western world. His faith in the
salutary, ennobling powers of knowledge justifies his reputation as the
first philosopher of the Enlightenment. In a broader context, he founded
a philosophical tradition, British empiricism, that would span three
centuries. In developing the Whig ideology underlying the exclusion
controversy and the Glorious Revolution, he formulated the classic
expression of liberalism, which was instrumental in the great
revolutions of 1776 and 1789. His influence remains strongly felt in the
West, as the notions of mind, freedom, and authority continue to be
challenged and explored.
Graham A.J. Rogers
