John Locke

Source

• Born: 29 August 1632
• Birthplace: Wrington, England
• Died: 28 October 1704
• Best Known As: Author of Essay Concerning Human Understanding

John Locke was a 17th-century English philosopher whose ideas formed the foundation of liberal democracy and greatly influenced both the American and French revolutions. His contributions to philosophy include the theory of knowledge known as empiricism, which addressed the limits of what we can understand about the nature of reality. Locke held that our understanding of reality ultimately derives from what we have experienced through the senses. The political implications of his theories included the notions that all people are born equal and that education can free people from the subjugation of tyranny. Locke also believed that government had a moral obligation to guarantee that individuals always retained sovereignty over their own rights, including ownership of property that resulted from their own labor.

Politically active, Locke was personal physician and advisor to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, a leader in the parliamentary opposition to King Charles II. In 1681 Shaftesbury was accused of conspiring to overthrow Charles and was tried for treason. Although acquitted, he fled to the Netherlands and Locke followed. Locke stayed in exile until 1689, during which time he wrote his masterpiece, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and actively plotted to put William of Orange on the English throne. Locke returned to England after King James II fled and William was crowned William III (in the turn of events known as the Glorious Revolution). Over the next several years he published his most important works, including A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), Two Treatises on Government (1690) and Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693).

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The English philosopher and political theorist John Locke (1632-1704) began the empiricist tradition and thus initiated the greatest age of British philosophy. He attempted to center philosophy on an analysis of the extent and capabilities of the human mind.

John Locke was born on Aug. 29, 1632, in Wrington, in Somerset, where his mother's family resided. She died during his infancy, and Locke was raised by his father, who was an attorney in the small town of Pensford near Bristol. John was tutored at home because of his always delicate health and the outbreak of civil war in 1642. When he was 14, he entered Westminster School, where he remained for 6 years. He then went to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1658 he was elected a senior student at his college. In this capacity he taught Greek and moral philosophy. Under conditions at the time he would have had to be ordained to retain his fellowship. Instead he changed to another faculty, medicine, and eventually received a license to practice. During the same period Locke made the acquaintance of Robert Boyle, the distinguished scientist and one of the founders of the Royal Society, and, under Boyle's direction, took up study of natural science. Finally, in 1668, Locke was made a fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1665 Locke traveled to the Continent as secretary to the English ambassador to the Brandenburg court. Upon his return to England he chanced to medically attend Lord Ashley, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, and later lord chancellor of England. Their friendship and lifelong association drew Locke into political affairs. He attended Shaftesbury as physician and adviser, and in this latter capacity Locke drafted The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina and served as secretary to the Board of Trade. In 1676 Locke went to France for his health. An inheritance from his father made him financially independent, and he remained in Montpellier for 3 years.

Locke rejoined Shaftesbury's service, and when the latter fled to Holland, the philosopher followed. He remained in exile from 1683 to 1689, and during these years he was deprived of his studentship by express order of Charles III. Most of his important writings were composed during this period. After the Glorious Revolution of 1689 Locke returned to England and later served with distinction as a commissioner of trade until 1700. He spent his retirement at Oates in Essex as the guest of the Mashams. Lady Masham was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the philosopher. Locke died there on Oct. 28, 1704.

Major Works

Locke, by virtue of his temperament and mode of existence, was a man of great circumspection. None of his major writings was published until he was nearly 60. In 1690 he brought out his major works: Two Treatises and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. But the four books of the Essay were the culmination of 20 years of intellectual labor. He relates that, together with a few friends, probably in 1670, a discussion arose concerning the basis of morality and religion. The conclusion was that they were unable to resolve the question until an investigation had been made to see "what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." Thus the aim of this work is "to inquire into the origin, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds of belief, opinion, and assent."

The procedure employed is what he called the "historical, plain method, " which consists of observations derived from external sensations and the internal processes of reflection or introspection. This psychological definition of experience as sensation and reflection shifted the focus of philosophy from an analysis of reality to an exploration of the mind. The new perspective was Locke's major contribution, and it dominated European thought for at least 2 centuries. But if knowledge consists entirely of experience, then the objects of cognition are ideas. The term "idea" was ambiguously defined by Locke as "whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks." This broad use means that sensations, memories, imaginings, and feelings as well as concepts are ideas insofar as they are mental. The danger of Locke's epistemology is the inherent skepticism contained in a technique which describes what is "in" the mind. For if everything is an idea, then it is difficult to distinguish between true and false, real and imaginary, impressed sensations and expressed concepts. Thus Locke, and the subsequent history of philosophy, had to wrestle with the dilemma that a psychological description of the origin of ideas seriously undermines the extent of their objective validity.

Nonetheless the intention of the Essay was positive in that Locke wished to establish the dependence of all human knowledge upon everyday experience or sensation. The alternative theory of innate ideas is vigorously attacked. Although it is not historically certain whether anyone seriously maintained such a doctrine, Locke's general criticism lends indirect support to an experiential view of knowledge. Innatism can be understood in a naive way to mean that there are ideas of which we are fully conscious at birth or which are universally acknowledged, so that the mind possesses a disposition to think in terms of certain ideas. The first position is refuted by observation of children, and the second by the fact that there are no acknowledged universal ideas to which everyone agrees. The sophisticated version falls into contradiction by maintaining that we are conscious of an unconscious disposition.

Theory of Knowledge

Having refuted the a priori, or nonexperiential, account of knowledge, Locke devotes the first two books of the Essay to developing a deceptively simple empirical theory of knowledge. Knowing originates in external and internal sources of sensation and reflection. The objects or ideas present to consciousness are divided into simple and complex. Simple ideas are primitive sense data, which the mind passively receives and cannot alter, delivered by one sense (seeing blue), by several senses (eating an orange as a synthesis of taste, touch, and smell), by reflection (hunger), or by a combination of sensation and reflection (pleasure and pain). The objective orientation of simple ideas follows from the fact that we cannot add or subtract from their appearance or conception in the mind. In relation to simple ideas, at least, the mind is passive, a "blank" or "white" tablet upon which sensations are impressed. Complex ideas are formed by actively combining, comparing, or abstracting simple ideas to yield "modes, substances, and relations." Modes are class concepts or ideas that do not exist independently, such as beauty. Substance is a complex idea of the unity of substrate of the simple qualities we perceive. And relations are the powers in objects capable of causing minds to make comparisons, for example, identity and cause and effect. The difficulty is that complex ideas do not relate to perceivable existents, but hopefully, complex ideas do express elements or characteristics of the real world.

Locke is faced with an acute dilemma. If the immediate object of knowledge is an idea, then man possesses only a derivative knowledge of the physical world. To know the real world adequately requires a complex idea which expresses the relation between the qualities that we perceive subjectively and the unperceived existent. The substance which unites the common perceived qualities of figure, bulk, and color into this one existing brown table is, in Locke's terms, an "I don't know what." His honesty almost brought Locke to a modern relational definition of substance instead of the traditional notion of a thing characterized by its properties. But the conclusion drawn in the Essay is that knowledge is relational; that is, it consists in the perception "of the agreement or disagreement among ideas." For if Locke had argued that knowledge expresses an adequation between the complex idea in the mind and the real object, then man would have the power to go beyond ideas to the object itself. But this is impossible, since every object is, by definition, an idea, and thus ironically, experiential knowledge is not about real objects but only about the perceived relations of ideas.

The third book of the Essay deals with words, and it is a pioneer contribution to the philosophy of language. Locke is a consistent nominalist in that for him language is an arbitrary convention and words are things which "stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of the man that has them." Each man's understanding can be confirmed by other minds insofar as they share the same linguistic conventions, although one of the singular abuses of language results from the fact that we learn names or words before understanding their use.

The purpose of Locke's analysis is to account for generalization, abstraction, and universals in terms of language. Generalizations are the result of drawing, or abstracting, what is common to many. In this sense, generalizations and universals are inventions of the mind which concern only signs. But they have a foundation in the similitude of things. And those class concepts which have a fixed meaning and definition can be understood as essences, but they are only nominal and not real. The difference between our knowledge and reality is like that between seeing the exterior of Big Ben and understanding how the clock works.

The final section of the Essay deals with the extent, types, and divisions of knowledge. This work seems to have been written earlier than the others, and many of its conclusions are qualified by preceding material. The agreement or disagreement of ideas, which constitutes knowledge, consists of identity and diversity, perceived relations, coexistence or real existence known by way of intuition, and demonstration or sensation of a given existent.

In this view the actual extent of man's knowledge is less than his ideas because he does not know the real connections between simple ideas, or primary and secondary qualities. Also, an intuitive knowledge of existence is limited to the self, and the only demonstrable existence is that of God as an eternal, omnipotent being. With the exception of the self and God, all knowledge of existing things is dependent upon sensation, whose cognitive status is "a little bit better than probability." The poverty of real knowledge is compensated to some extent by human judgment, which presumes things to be true without actually perceiving the connections. And, according to Locke's commonsense attitude, the severe restrictions placed upon knowledge merely reflect that man's mental capacity is suitable for his nature and condition.

Further Reading

The best modern editions of Locke are An Essay concerning Human Understanding (2 vols., 1961; rev. ed. 1965), edited by John W. Yolton, and Two Treatises of Government (1960), edited by Peter Laslett. There are various editions of Some Thoughts concerning Education, A Letter concerning Toleration, and The Reasonableness of Christianity. Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957), is the best study. Excellent studies of his philosophy include James Gibson, Locke's Theory of Knowledge and Its Historical Relations (1917), Richard I. Aaron, John Locke (1937; 2d ed. 1955), and John W. Yolton, John Locke and the Way of Ideas (1956). Other useful studies of Locke and his thought are Willmoore

Kendall, John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule (1959); Crawford B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (1962); James D. Collins, The British Empiricists: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (1967); Charles B. Martin and D. M. Armstrong, eds., Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays (1968); and John W. Yolton, John Locke: Problems and Perspectives: A Collection of New Essays (1969). For general background see George N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century (1929; 2d ed. 1947), and Basil Willey, The Seventeenth-century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion (1934).

(1632-1704) English philosopher widely regarded as one of the fathers of the Enlightenment and as a key figure in the development of liberalism. Locke became a Student (i.e. Fellow) of Christ Church Oxford in 1658, but his tutorial activities came to an end in 1667, seven years after the Restoration, when Locke moved into the household of Lord Ashley (formerly Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and subsequently Lord Shaftesbury). His reputation as a political theorist rests upon Two Treatises of Government (1690); as a philosopher and founder of empiricism, on his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). He also wrote the highly-regarded Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), the manuscript of which was based on letters written while he was staying in Holland (where Locke had travelled following the failure of Shaftesbury's political projects, and his death in 1683). His Letter Concerning Toleration (1693) deals with the proper extent of freedom of religious conscience. Its general claim was that rulers cannot have certain knowledge that the religion in which they believe is the true religion; but government is permitted to interfere if religion is a threat to order. Toleration could not be extended to atheists, who would not be bound by conventional oaths, nor to Roman Catholics whose allegiance lay elsewhere. The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) stimulated considerable argument; Locke asserted that reason and revelation concurred in their specification of the law of nature (see also natural law).

Two Treatises of Government is ostensibly written as a refutation of the ideas of Filmer, who argued in his book Patriarcha: or The natural power of kings that the liberal jurisprudents Grotius and Pufendorf had set out from false premisses. Whereas they had claimed that the world was originally given to all, and that property and government had subsequently arisen from agreement, Filmer argued that the Creation conferred upon Adam private property and the right to rule. Political authority was thus God-given, not conferred by the individual choice of previously free persons. Locke wanted to explain the origins of property and political authority, maintaining an interpretation of the biblical story as the creation of natural equality, without falling foul of Filmer's criticisms of incoherence in earlier natural rights theories. He conceived political authority to be the result of an agreement to introduce necessary protection for property, in which term he embraced ‘life, liberty and estate’. The government was entrusted with authority for limited purposes, and was liable to removal if it exceeded or abused its powers. Private property was explained, not by agreement, but by the activity of labour. In his account of legitimate appropriation from the common gift, Locke referred both to the right of the labourer to that with which his labour was mixed, and to the capacity of labour to confer value on its object. Many writers subsequently deployed a labour theory of property entitlement, or a labour theory of value, and the relationship between the two in the history of social thought is a complex matter. Locke's account of the origins of private property has led some commentators to see him as an apologist for a rising bourgeoisie, while others emphasize what they see as his Calvinism, and others an attachment to a landed interest. Locke aimed to depict political power as quite distinct from the power of a parent or from the power associated with property. He argued not only for limited government but for a separation of powers, the rule of law, and the legitimacy of rebellion in some circumstances.

The possible connection between these arguments and Locke's role in Shaftesbury's household has led to close investigation of the circumstances in which the Two Treatises was written. Shaftesbury had wanted to exclude the Catholic Duke of York (later James II) from acceding to the throne, and supported the (failed) Exclusion Bill to that end. The Exclusion Crisis has been put forward as the proper context for Locke's Second Treatise (which, some have argued, was written before the First, but placed after it when they were published in 1690). But Shaftesbury also thought of armed rebellion after that failure, and this has also been proposed as the context of the book's composition. This controversy about context has been invoked in assessments of the extent of Locke's radical democratic commitments: was he arguing that it would be legitimate for the people to take up arms against James if he became king? Or that the political elite would be justified in negating his claim to the throne through law? While Locke's liberal credentials can scarcely be doubted, there is no agreement on just what sort of liberal he was.

— Andrew Reeve

Locke, John (1632-1704). Perhaps the most influential English-language philosopher and political theorist, Locke is regarded as the founding thinker of liberalism. Locke lived in the household of Shaftesbury the Whig leader and like him had to go into exile. His Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) contains two fundamental assumptions: that religion is a matter for each individual, and that churches are voluntary associations. His arguments lead logically to the principle and practice of separation of church and state. The Two Treatises of Government bases government on the consent of the governed, who need an authority to defend their property. Aruler who turns himself into a tyrant, as Charles II and James II had been doing, forfeits his authority and may be resisted.

Locke, John (1632-1704) English philosopher. Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset and educated at Oxford, where he seemed destined for a career in medicine. In 1666 he met Anthony Ashley-Cooper, later the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, who became his friend and patron. Locke supervised a major operation to remove a hydatid cyst of the liver from Shaftesbury in 1668; the wits of the time found it very amusing that Shaftesbury's liver needed a silver tap for the rest of his life. From 1675 to 1679 Locke lived in France, where he studied the work of Descartes and Gassendi. Shaftesbury, who had been much engaged with parliamentary opposition to the house of Stuart, fled to Holland in 1681, and Locke followed in 1683, returning to England after the accession of William of Orange in 1688. In the course of the next year Locke's major philosophical works, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises of Government, as well as the Letter on Toleration, were published, the latter two anonymously. Locke's final years saw Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). He was given minor administrative functions by the government, and lived out his life quietly at the house of Damaris, Lady Masham in Essex.

Although he is famous as the senior figure of British empiricism, Locke's philosophy is more complex than this suggests. The Essay rejects any place for ‘innate ideas’ in the foundations of knowledge, and is in that sense anti- rationalistic. It puts experience, or ideas of sensation and reflection, firmly at the basis of human understanding. However, Locke retains the possibility of knowing that some of our ideas (those of primary qualities) give us an adequate representation of the world around us. But the power to know things derives from the all-knowing God, and ‘we more certainly know that there is a GOD than that there is any thing else without us' (Essay, iv. 10). Although Locke is thought of as the first great English philosopher of the scientific revolution, the ally and ‘underlabourer’ for Boyle and Newton, he himself was doubtful whether such natural philosophy could ever aspire to the condition of a science, by which he meant an activity capable of yielding us God-like rational and adequate insight into the real essences of things (Essay, iii. 26). The task of a scientific epistemology is to display what we do know, the various sources of knowledge, the proper employment, and above all the limits and doubtful capacities of our minds. It is through this theme that Locke connected his epistemology with the defence of religious toleration. This radical doctrine, together with his work on property and on the relationship between government and consent, is his enduring legacy to political philosophy.

Locke's great distinction lies in his close attention to the actual phenomena of mental life, but his philosophy is in fact balanced precariously between the radical empiricism of followers such as Berkeley and Hume, and the theological world of reliance on reason underpinning the deliverances of the Christian religion that formed the climate in which he lived. His view that religion and morality were as much open to demonstration and proof as mathematics stamps him as a pre- Enlightenment figure, even as his insistence on the primacy of ideas opened the way to more radical departures from that climate.

Locke, John (lŏk), 1632-1704, English philosopher, founder of British empiricism. Locke summed up the Enlightenment in his belief in the middle class and its right to freedom of conscience and right to property, in his faith in science, and in his confidence in the goodness of humanity. His influence upon philosophy and political theory has been incalculable.

Life and Work

Educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, he became (1660) a lecturer there in Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy. He studied medicine, and his acquaintance with scientific practice had a strong influence upon his philosophical thought and method. In 1666, Locke met Anthony Ashley Cooper, the future 1st earl of Shaftesbury, and soon became his friend, physician, and adviser. After 1667, Locke had minor diplomatic and civil posts, most of them through Shaftesbury. In 1675, after Shaftesbury had lost his offices, Locke left England for France, where he met French leaders in science and philosophy.

Returning to England in 1679, he soon retired to Oxford, where he stayed quietly until, suspected of radicalism by the government, he went to Holland and remained there several years (1683-89). In Holland he completed the famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), which was published in complete form after his return to England at the accession of William and Mary to the English throne. In the same year he published his Two Treatises on Civil Government; part of this work justifies the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but much of it was written earlier. His fame increased, and he became known in England and on the Continent as the leading philosopher of freedom.

Philosophy

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke examines the nature of the human mind and the process by which it knows the world. Repudiating the traditional doctrine of innate ideas, Locke believed that the mind is born blank, a tabula rasa upon which the world describes itself through the experience of the five senses. Knowledge arising from sensation is perfected by reflection, thus enabling humans to arrive at such ideas as space, time, and infinity.

Locke distinguished the primary qualities of things (e.g., solidity, extension, number) from their secondary qualities (e.g., color, sound). These latter qualities he held to be produced by the impact of the world on the sense organs. Behind this curtain of sensation the world itself is colorless and silent. Science is possible, Locke maintained, because the primary world affects the sense organs mechanically, thus producing ideas that faithfully represent reality. The clear, common-sense style of the Essay concealed many unexplored assumptions that the later empiricists George Berkeley and David Hume would contest, but the problems that Locke set forth have occupied philosophy in one way or another ever since.

Political Theory

Locke is most renowned for his political theory. Contradicting Thomas Hobbes, Locke believed that the original state of nature was happy and characterized by reason and tolerance. In that state all people were equal and independent, and none had a right to harm another's "life, health, liberty, or possessions." The state was formed by social contract because in the state of nature each was his own judge, and there was no protection against those who lived outside the law of nature. The state should be guided by natural law.

Rights of property are very important, because each person has a right to the product of his or her labor. Locke forecast the labor theory of value. The policy of governmental checks and balances, as delineated in the Constitution of the United States, was set down by Locke, as was the doctrine that revolution in some circumstances is not only a right but an obligation. At Shaftesbury's behest, he contributed to the Fundamental Constitutions for the Carolinas; the colony's proprietors, however, never implemented the document.

Ethical Theory

Locke based his ethical theories upon belief in the natural goodness of humanity. The inevitable pursuit of happiness and pleasure, when conducted rationally, leads to cooperation, and in the long run private happiness and the general welfare coincide. Immediate pleasures must give way to a prudent regard for ultimate good, including reward in the afterlife. He argued for broad religious freedom in three separate essays on toleration but excepted atheism and Roman Catholicism, which he felt should be legislated against as inimical to religion and the state. In his essay The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), he emphasized the ethical aspect of Christianity against dogma.

Bibliography

See biographies by M. W. Cranston (1957) and R. Aaron (3d ed. 1971); R. S. Woolhouse, Locke's Philosophy of Science and Knowledge (1971); J. W. Gough, ed., John Locke's Political Philosophy; Eight Essays (2d ed. 1973); E. Tagart, Locke's Writings and Philosophy Historically Considered (1977); R. W. Grant, John Locke's Liberalism (1987).

Locke, John (1632–1704), English philosopher, political and educational theorist, political economist, scholar, statesman, and sometime physician. John Locke, one of the leading figures in the history of English letters, was born on 29 August 1632 in the village of Wrington, Somerset, and was immediately surrounded by the political and religious controversies that were always to be at the center of his life. His parents were Puritans, and his father later fought on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War. Locke attended Westminster School from 1646 to 1652, when he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1656. During this period, he wrote but did not publish a pair of essays criticizing the extensive conceptions of religious indifference and toleration advocated by Edward Bagshawe's The Great Question concerning Things Indifferent in Religious Worship (1660), and he delivered a series of lectures on natural law.

At Oxford, Locke was a friend of the scientist Robert Boyle and other original members of the Royal Society, to which Locke himself was elected in 1668. Rather than take religious orders, he changed his studies to medicine and was trained and influenced by the physician Thomas Sydenham. On a diplomatic mission to Cleves in Brandenburg in 1665, Locke experienced an unanticipated degree of toleration, which seems to have had a major impact on his philosophical and political thinking. In 1666 he had met Anthony Ashley Cooper, subsequently the Earl of Shaftesbury, into whose household he moved in 1667 as the earl's personal physician and advisor, political aide, and author of political documents.

Shaftesbury, who fell into and out of grace with the king, was at the center of Restoration politics, and Locke was invariably at his side. For Shaftesbury Locke wrote a tract defending toleration in 1667, a draft constitution for the Carolina colony of which Shaftesbury was a proprietor, a defense of the king's prerogative power to issue a declaration of religious toleration in 1669, and—most important—the Two Treatises of Government. It was also while he was a member of the Shaftesbury household that Locke's interest in philosophy deepened, and he completed various drafts of his Essay concerning Human Understanding.

Locke returned to Oxford in 1675, but like Shaftesbury he later went into political exile in the Netherlands, where he remained until 1689. There he enjoyed the friendship and support of Jean Leclerc, to whose Bibliothèque universelle et historique (1686–1693) he made several contributions, and Phillip Limborch, to whom he would dedicate the Epistola de tolerantia, published anonymously in the Netherlands in 1689 and translated into English (also anonymously) the next year as the Letter concerning Toleration. During his exile, Locke completed much of the final version of the Essay, an abstract of which was published by Leclerc in 1688.

While in the Netherlands, Locke presumably was involved in Monmouth's Rebellion in 1685 and in the politics of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which brought the Dutch sovereign William of Orange and his wife Mary, daughter of James II, to the English throne. Locke himself returned to England in 1689 and began his public literary career, publishing the works that would establish his status in the pantheon of western philosophy and political theory. The Essay concerning Human Understanding appeared in December 1689 (dated 1690), and the Two Treatises were published anonymously in 1690.

The Essay is regarded as one of the foundational works of modern empirical, or rather "experiential," philosophy. It opens with an extensive attack on the notion that some ideas are "innate," arguing, on the contrary, that the human mind at birth is a "blank slate" (tabula rasa) but has the capacity to perceive and reason. Locke went on to claim that all ideas and knowledge are acquired from experience, which can be either sensationalist or rational, and that they bear direct relationships to a real, external world. The Essay also deals with language, its relationship to ideas, and its imperfections and abuses, and with reason and its role in the acquisition and assessment of knowledge. This "rationalism," albeit less extreme than that of René Descartes (1596–1650), is sometimes seen as conflicting with the rest of the Essay, but the apparent contradiction between the two positions can be found throughout the work. In a move that would be anathema to modern empiricists, Locke occasionally sidestepped difficult philosophical issues by referring to their resolution in the ultimately unknowable mind of God, for faith, as the acceptance of revelation, was one of the cardinal supports of Locke's entire system.

The Two Treatises are equally foundational for subsequent political philosophy as is the Essay for empirical philosophy, and their reliance upon divine will is even more overt. Written in the early 1680s as part of Shaftesbury's exclusion campaign, the work was not published until 1690, when it was issued as a theoretical support of the successful Glorious Revolution. The Two Treatises were directed against the patriarchal theory of Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588–1653); the First Treatise, in particular, was a detailed and sometimes page-by-page attack on patriarchalism. In the Second Treatise Locke developed his own political theory, which was also an implicit assault on Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), whom Locke never identified. Locke replaced Filmer's divine right sovereignty, derived from the paternity of Adam, with a conception of government and politics based on vaguely articulated notions of natural law and natural rights. He posited a pre-political state of nature characterized by human equality and freedom, the ownership of the world in common by God's grant, and legitimacy based on consent. Personal property was acquired by the mixing of one's labor with that which was common.

The most important part of Locke's criticism of Filmer was his insistence that fatherhood and political government are distinct forms of authority. Filmer had asserted their identity. Locke, however, was at pains to argue that while political or civil society had emerged historically and anthropologically from the household, paternal and political dominion were altogether distinct. The act of consent transformed fatherhood into government and undergirded all subsequent legitimacy.

The Two Treatises are perhaps best known for their theories of property and revolution. Government, according to Locke, is a human contrivance made necessary by the growing complexities of the state of nature and especially by the increasing insecurity of personal property. Locke had two conceptions of "property." In the state of nature (through chapter V of the Second Treatise), "property" meant land and goods, including money; in civil society, however, it almost always meant "life, liberty, and estate," which was the more widely accepted meaning in seventeenth-century England. Locke's initial reliance upon the former definition—and the subsequent importance of the Two Treatises—undoubtedly played a large role in popularizing that narrower understanding among modern English speakers, but his shift back to the more conventional and broader meaning was the source of some ambiguities in his political theory.

The purpose of government according to Locke is to protect property, and it is in return for that protection that people agree to transfer to the government their individual rights to interpret and enforce the law of nature. When the government no longer provides that protection, or if it becomes an enemy to property, the duty to obey is superseded by a right of revolution, whereby the power and authority conveyed to the government revert to the people (or their representatives) who may then establish a new government.

The Letter concerning Toleration is a specific application of the principles of the Two Treatises. What was innovative and radical about the Letter was the argument that religious imposition went so far beyond the legitimate competence of the magistrate as to be a ground for resistance. Locke drew a firm distinction between the secular ends of magistracy and the religious ends of churches. In doing so, he made a bolder move toward genuine religious liberty than had any of his contemporaries. But Locke excluded Roman Catholics from this toleration, alleging, like many of his contemporaries, that they owed their primary political loyalty to the pope rather than to civil rulers. He was confident, however, that Protestant Christians could live at peace within one civil society despite their diverse religious beliefs.

Locke spent the rest of life in public service and writing. He was a member of the Board of Trade and published revisions of the Essay, replies to criticisms of the Letter concerning Toleration, and tracts on education, religion, and money, some of which were published after his death. Locke died on 28 October 1704 at Oates, Essex, at the home of Sir Francis and Lady Masham (the daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth), where he had been living since 1691. He is buried in High Laver Church in Essex. Much of his massive collection of personal manuscripts—including journals, diaries, letters he received, and copies of those he sent—and a substantial part of his library have survived and are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter Niddich. Oxford, 1975.

——. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. 2nd edition. Cambridge, U.K., 1988.

Secondary Sources

Ayers, Michael. Locke. New York, 1991.

Franklin, Julian H. John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty: Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1978.

Marshall, John. John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1994.

Yolton, John W. Locke: An Introduction. Oxford and New York, 1985.

——. Locke and French Materialism. Oxford and New York, 1991.

—GORDON SCHOCHET

John Locke was a seventeenth-century English philosopher whose writings on political theory and government profoundly affected U.S. law and society. It is chiefly from Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) that U.S. politics takes its core premises of the ultimate sovereignty of the people, the necessity of restraints on the exercise of arbitrary power by the executive or the legislature, and the ability of the people to revoke their social contract with the government when power has been arbitrarily used against them. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are testaments to many of Locke's central ideas.

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, England, on August 29, 1632. His father, also John Locke, was an attorney, and a Calvinist with Puritan sympathies who supported the parliamentary side in England's struggle against King Charles I and fought on that side in the English Civil War of 1642. Despite this background Locke developed monarchist leanings while attending boarding school, which remained with him throughout his life.

In 1652 Locke entered Oxford University, where he became interested in medicine and the newly developed discipline of experimental science. He collaborated with Robert Boyle, a founder of modern chemistry. Locke studied natural science and philosophy, concentrating on the principles of moral, social, and political laws. Following graduation in 1656, he earned a master of arts degree and was appointed a tutor at Oxford. He left teaching in 1662 and in 1666 decided to pursue medicine. In 1668 Locke was elected to the Royal Society.

In 1675, plagued with the symptoms of consumption, Locke moved to France in the hope of improving his health. He studied philosophy while abroad, then returned to England in 1679. His friendship with the duke of Shaftsbury made his stay in England a short one. Shaftsbury had been discovered as having been involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the king. Though Shaftsbury was acquitted of the charges, he fled to Holland in 1683. The king became suspicious of Locke and other friends of Shaftsbury, and had Locke closely watched. Knowing that his personal safety was at risk, Locke also chose exile in Holland in 1683. In 1684 his name appeared with eighty-three others on a list sent to The Hague by the English government, with the accusation that those named had committed treason and a demand for their extradition by the Dutch government. Locke went into hiding for a while, but soon returned to public life when the Dutch refused the extradition request.

While in Holland, Locke wrote Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) and Two Treatises. Essay set forth Locke's theory that all human knowledge comes from experience. It stated that people are born without ideas—that is, with a blank mind—directly challenging the belief that people are born with certain knowledge already implanted. It further stated that as a result people must formulate their ideas based on experience. This theory became the basis for the school of English philosophy called empiricism.

Two Treatises was written when England was divided over the rule of King James II. The Protestants wished to remove the king, who was a Roman Catholic. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James abdicated the throne and Parliament offered the crown to the Dutch prince William of Orange and his wife, Mary. The revolution re-formed government along the lines outlined by Locke in Two Treatises, which was published in 1690. England became a constitutional monarchy, controlled by Parliament, and greater measures of religious toleration and freedom of expression and thought were permitted.

Two Treatises was a blow to political absolutism. The first treatise was a refutation of the theory of the divine right of kings, which posits that monarchs derive their authority from God. The second treatise had the most lasting effect, for it set out a theory of politics that found its way into U.S. law.

In this second treatise, Locke maintained that people are naturally tolerant and reasonable, but that without a governing force, a certain amount of chaos and other inconvenience will occur. In his view people are basically pacific, communitarian, and good-natured. This belief contrasts with that of philosopher Thomas Hobbes, which is that if left to their own devices, people will live in violent, selfish anarchy.

For Locke all people are inherently equal and free to pursue "life, liberty, health, and property." To do this they engage in a social contract in which they consent to give up a certain amount of power to a government dedicated to maintaining the well-being of the whole. They also give up one right, the right to judge and punish other persons, which is permitted in the state of nature. Apart from that concession to government, Locke argued, a person's individual right to freedom of thought, speech, and worship must be preserved. In addition, a person's private property must be preserved by the government. This compact between the people and their rulers legitimizes the government and explains the source of the rulers' power.

Locke believed that the people's consent to give up some power is the essential element of the social contract. Government is the trustee of the people's power, and any exercise of power by government is specifically for the purpose of serving the people. By extending the trust analogy, Locke legitimized the concept of revolution. If their trust is abused by their governors, the people—the grantors of the trust—have a right to revoke the trust. Once the trust has been revoked, the people can assume the reins of government themselves or place them in new hands.

Locke attempted to soften this justification for revolution by claiming that revolution is appropriate only as a last resort and only in extreme circumstances. But he gave no real guidance as to how the people can be trusted to distinguish between inevitable temporary aberrations, which are to be endured, and a long series of abuses that justifies rebellion.

Two Treatises was well received in England, making Locke a respected figure once more and the intellectual leader of the Whig party. He returned to England in 1689, following the Glorious Revolution. He lived in semiretirement in Essex, in the company of friends such as the scientist Sir Isaac Newton. He died October 28, 1704, in Oates, Essex.

Two Treatises commanded great interest in the eighteenth century, providing justification for the American Revolution in 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789. The U.S. Declaration of Independence uses Locke's ideas of the law of nature, popular sovereignty, and the sanctity of the right of private property to set forth the premises of U.S. political thought. The U.S. Constitution, with its separation of church and state and its guarantee of personal freedoms, draws on Locke's work.

In the United States, Lockean thought continues to justify resistance to executive tyranny, such as the despotism that was exhibited by President Richard M. Nixon in the Watergate affair in the early 1970s and led to his resignation in 1974. Locke's second treatise provides support for U.S. constitutional ideals of inalienable rights and personal liberty. The First Amendment would be unthinkable without Locke's philosophical foundation.

Quotes:

"The discipline of desire is the background of character."

"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it."

"No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience."

"Fashion for the most part is nothing but the ostentation of riches."

"Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power vested in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, when the rule prescribes not, and not to be subject to the inconstant, unknown, arbitrary will of another man."

"Government has no other end, but the preservation of property."

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