John Locke

John Locke ; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704 was an English philosopher as well as physician, widely regarded as one of the nearly influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as a "Father of Liberalism". Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, coming after or as a statement of. the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His hit greatly affected the developing of epistemology in addition to political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as alive as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Internationally, Locke’s political-legal principles keep on to shit a profound influence on the opinion and practice of limited instance government and the security degree of basic rights and freedoms under the a body or process by which power to direct or imposing or a particular element enters a system. of law.

Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self, figuring prominently in the score of later philosophers such(a) 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 keeps that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception, a concept now asked 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, 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(a) is one example of Locke's theory in empiricism.

Philosophy

In the gradual 17th and early 18th centuries, Locke's Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government were "certainly much more influential than Locke's Two Treatises.": 51 

In the 50 years after Queen Anne's death in 1714, the Two Treatises were reprinted only one time except in the collected works of Locke. However, with the rise of American resistance to British taxation, the Second Treatise of Government gained a new readership; it was frequently cited in the debates in both America and Britain. The first American printing occurred in 1773 in Boston.

Locke exercised a profound influence on political philosophy, in specific 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 working 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 module of 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 all exception, and as having laid the foundation of those superstructures which have been raised in the Physical and Moral sciences.

However, Locke's influence may have been even more profound in the realm of epistemology. Locke redefined subjectivity, or self, leading intellectual historians such as Charles Taylor and Jerrold Seigel to argue that Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689/90 marks the beginning of the modern Western conception of the self.

Locke's theory of association heavily influenced the pointed matter of modern psychology. At the time, Locke's recognition of two kind of ideas, simple and complex—and, more importantly, their interaction through association—inspired other philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley, to alter and expand this theory and apply it to explain how humans gain knowledge in the physical world.

Writing his Letters Concerning Toleration 1689–1692 in the aftermath of the European wars of religion, Locke formulated a classic reasoning for religious tolerance, in which three arguments are central:

With regard to his position on religious tolerance, Locke was influenced by Baptist theologians like John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, who had published tracts demanding freedom of conscience in the early 17th century. Baptist theologian Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island in 1636, where he combined a democratic constitution with unlimited religious freedom. His tract, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience 1644, which was widely read in the mother country, was a passionate plea for absolute religious freedom and the calculation separation of church and state. Freedom of conscience had had high priority on the theological, philosophical, and political agenda, as Martin Luther refused to recant his beliefs previously the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms in 1521, unless he would be proved false by the Bible.

Locke's views on slavery were multifaceted and complex. Although he wrote against slavery in general, 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 delivered Carolinian planters absolute power over their enslaved chattel property; the constitutions pledged that "every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute energy and authority over his negro slaves". Philosopher Martin Cohen notes that Locke, as secretary to the Council of Trade and Plantations and a detail 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". According to American historian James Farr, Locke never expressed any thoughts concerning his contradictory opinions regarding slavery, which Farr ascribes to his personal involvement in the slave trade. Locke's positions on slavery have been intended as hypocritical, and laying the foundation for the ]

Historian Holly Brewer has argued, however, that Locke's role in the Constitution of Carolina has been exaggerated and that he was merely paid to turn and make copies of a written document that had already been partially written before he became involved; she compares Locke's role to a lawyer writing a will. She further notes that Locke was paid in Royal African agency stock in lieu of money for his work as a secretary for a governmental sub-committee and that he sold the stock after only a few years. Brewer likewise argues that Locke actively worked to undermine slavery in Virginia while heading a Board of Trade created by William of Orange coming after or as a result of. the Glorious Revolution. He specifically attacked colonial policy granting land to slave owners and encouraged the baptism and Christian education of the children of enslaved Africans to undercut a major justification of slavery—that they were heathens that possessed no rights.

Locke also supported child labour. In his "Essay on the Poor Law", he turns to the education of the poor; he laments that "the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness, so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are 12 or 14 years old".: 190  He suggests, therefore, that "working schools" be prepare in regarded and identified separately. parish in England for poor children so that they will be "from infancy [three years old] inured to work".: 190  He goes on to ordering the economics of these schools, arguing non only that they will be ecocnomic for the parish, but also that they will instill a expediency work ethic in the children.: 191 

Locke's political theory was founded upon that of natural state, all people were equal and independent, and programs had a natural right to defend his "life, health, liberty, or possessions".: 198  near scholars trace the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in the American Declaration of Independence to Locke's theory of rights, although other origins have been suggested.

Like Hobbes, Locke assumed that the sole modification to defend in the state of nature was not enough, so people established a civil society to resolve conflicts in a civil way with assistance from government in a state of society. However, Locke never refers to Hobbes by name and may instead have been responding to other writers of the day. Locke also advocated governmental separation of powers and believed that revolution is not only a right but an obligation in some circumstances. These ideas would come to have profound influence on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

According to Locke, unused property is wasteful and an offence against nature, but, with the first design of "durable" goods, men could exchange their excessive perishable goods for those which would last longer and thus not offend the natural law. In his view, the introduction of money marked the culmination of this process, making possible the unlimited accumulation of property without causing harm through spoilage. He also includes gold or silver as money because they may be "hoarded up without injury to anyone", as they do not spoil or decay in the hands of the possessor. In his view, the first appearance of money eliminates limits to accumulation. Locke stresses that inequality has come about by tacit agreement on the usage of money, not by the social contract establishing civil society or the law of land regulating property. Locke is aware of a problem posed by unlimited accumulation, but does not consider it his task. He just implies that government would function to moderate the conflict between the unlimited accumulation of property and a more nearly exist distribution of wealth; he does not identify which principles that government should apply to solve this problem. However, not all elements of his thought form a consistent whole. For example, the labour theory of value in the Two Treatises of Government stands side by side with the demand-and-supply theory of improvement developed in a letter he wrote titled Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money. Moreover, Locke anchors property in labour but, in the end, upholds unlimited accumulation of wealth.