Social and political philosopher of the Enlightenment, b. 29 (18*) August 1632 (Wrington, Somerset, England), d. 28 (17*) October 1704 (Oates, Essex).
John Locke came from a protestant family. His father was a country attorney with a modest income, but connections with the parliamentary side of the Civil War meant that the young John could attend upper class Westminster School and in 1652 enter Christ Church college at the University of Oxford. He followed the classical curriculum of grammar, philosophy, geometry and Greek but took more interest in science and medicine, which he studied on his own.
Locke received his Master of Arts in 1658 and became a member of Christ Church, where he was appointed tutor. In 1661 an inheritance guaranteed him a modest annual income for life, and he left his tutor position. After brief service in a diplomatic mission in 1665 he concentrated on studying natural sciences and philosophy, particularly the works of Descartes.
In 1666 Locke was introduced to the politician Lord Ashley (later Lord Shaftsbury) and became his family physician. Ashley promoted the parliamentary system with a constitutional protestant monarchy, religious tolerance, and economic expansion of the empire, ideas Locke had already espoused during his studies.
In 1668 Locke was elected a member of the Royal Society, which had just been established in 1660. He kept a debating circle in his residence, where a meeting of 1671 set itself the task "to examine our own abilities and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with." He participated in the drafting of the constitution for the new colony of Carolina, which guaranteed freedom of worship to all inhabitants but barred atheists from admission.
Throughout his life Locke suffered from asthma. When he became secretary to the newly established Council of Trade and Plantations in 1672, London's fog and smog-polluted air forced him to quit the post in 1675. From 1675 to 1679 he lived in France.
England was in turmoil at the time. On one side were Shaftsbury and the supporters of parliamentary rule, trade expansion and protestantism, on the other side the monarchists and the Catholic church. Shaftsbury had been imprisoned for a year during Locke's stay in France, and in 1681 he was again arrested. He fled to Holland in 1682 and died there the following year. Without protection from a powerful politician Locke had to leave the country as well and went to Holland in 1683, to avoid the rule of the Catholic James II, who became king in 1685.
James II was overthrown in 1688, and Prince William of Orange was invited to take the throne. Locke returned to England with the entourage of the Princess of Orange in 1689. He enjoyed "the glorious, bloodless revolution" but did not participate much in public life. In 1691 he again retreated from the London air to the countryside.
England was now a constitutional monarchy controlled by a parliament; the law was reformed, a degree of religious tolerance was achieved and freedom of thought guaranteed. Locke supported the abolition of the Act for the Regulation of Printing and drafted the arguments for the parliamentary debate himself. Freedom of the press was finally guaranteed when the act was repealed in 1695.
Locke's main aim during these years was the publication of his works, the result of years of reflection and thought. He had begun his most famous work, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, in 1671, but it was not published until December of 1689 (marked 1690) and underwent much revision in later editions.
Locke's approach to philosophy reflected his scientific education; he was the first major philosopher of the "Enlightenment". Locke rejected the idea that the thruth about the universe could be found through reason alone and saw Newton and his fellow scientists as the true philosophers because they advanced knowledge from experience and analysis. Perception of the senses is the foundation of all knowledge; "reflection" of perceived physical objects produces the "ideas" that represent the objects in one's mind.
In Book II of the EssayLocke also discussed ideas that do not represent physical objects of the outside world but are the result of introspection. His analysis provided the groundwork for empirical psychology. In Book III he proceeded to an analysis of language: Words are signs which stand for ideas of objects, not for the objects themselves.
In his political theory Locke defined political power as
The ruler's authority is thus conditional on fulfilling the duties of power and is forfeited if it is not for the common good. The other members of society are not entirely subjugated to the ruler; every member has rights to property by "mixing his labour" with things originally given to all but now acquired by him through his labour. (This is the first expression of the theory of value that formed the basis of the works of Adam Smith and Karl Marx.) By joining society the individual retains all rights except his "executive power of the law of Nature" to judge and punish others; this right is "resigned to the public". This requires separation of the legislative and executive power and election of the legislative body.
Locke was the father of a tradition of enlightened thought that would dominate European civilization for three centuries. The American Revolution espoused his liberalism, and Locke is often seen as the inspirer of the constitution of the USA. Among his major works are:
Philosophy, religion and education
Political philosophy and economics
John Locke. Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th ed. (1995)
* English date of the time. The calendar used in continental Europe did not come into force in England until 1752.
