John Locke

Introduction

John Locke is the founder of modern empiricist philosophy and the foundational theorist of classical liberalism. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) opens the modern philosophical inquiry into what the mind contains and how it gets there; his Two Treatises of Government (1689) and A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) provide the philosophical foundation of liberal political theory that shaped the American founding, the French Revolution, and the modern human rights tradition.

Locke's epistemology and his political philosophy are not separable. The conviction that humans are by nature equal in cognitive endowment, capable of acquiring knowledge through their own experience, and not dependent on inherited authority for what they should believe, runs through both projects. The political consequences — government by consent, religious toleration, natural rights to life, liberty, and property — follow from a picture of human beings as cognitively self-sufficient adults capable of governing themselves.

Life

Locke was born in 1632 in Wrington, Somerset, England, to a Puritan family of modest standing. His father was a country lawyer who served in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. Locke attended Westminster School in London and then Christ Church, Oxford (1652–1660), where he studied the standard Scholastic curriculum but was already turning toward the new natural philosophy of Robert Boyle and the early Royal Society.

In 1666 Locke met Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the first Earl of Shaftesbury), one of the leading Whig statesmen of the period; the meeting was the turning point of his career. Locke became Shaftesbury's personal physician, secretary, and political confidant, and through Shaftesbury was drawn into the political struggles of the Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681). When Shaftesbury's faction lost out and Shaftesbury fled to Holland in 1682, Locke followed in 1683 and remained in Dutch exile for over five years.

The Dutch years were Locke's most productive philosophically. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding (begun in 1671) was largely completed during exile; the Two Treatises of Government and the Letter Concerning Toleration were also drafted there. The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 (which exiled James II and brought William and Mary to the throne) allowed Locke's return to England in 1689 — accompanying Princess Mary on the return crossing. His major works appeared in rapid succession in 1689 and the years immediately following.

In his later years Locke served on the Board of Trade and Plantations, advising the English government on colonial policy (a connection that has produced continuing scholarly engagement with the relation between his liberalism and his involvement in colonial commerce, including the slave trade). He died in 1704 at Oates in Essex, where he had spent his last years in retirement at the home of Sir Francis and Lady Masham.

The problem he worked on

Locke's Essay opens with a methodological question: before we ask what is true about the world, we should ask what the human mind is capable of knowing. The inquiry into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge is the prerequisite for any responsible philosophical or scientific work. The Essay is the working out of this inquiry.

The political works engage a different but related problem: what is the legitimate basis of political authority? Locke's answer, against the divine-right theorists of his day (Filmer's Patriarcha is the immediate polemical target of the Two Treatises), is that political authority derives from the consent of the governed and is bounded by the natural rights of individuals. Government exists to protect these rights; government that systematically violates them loses its legitimacy.

The broader project unifying the philosophical and political work is the establishment of a moderate, evidence-based, tolerant intellectual and political culture appropriate to a post-religious-war, post-revolutionary Europe seeking grounds for stability that did not depend on enforced theological agreement.

Contributions

The blank slate

The Essay opens (Book I) with a polemic against innate ideas. Locke argues that the mind has no innate principles or ideas; at birth it is a tabula rasa (the term itself is Aristotelian, recovered by Locke). Everything in the mind comes from one of two sources: sensation (the outward senses providing ideas of external objects) and reflection (the mind's awareness of its own operations). The doctrine grounds Locke's empiricism and has been continuously contested by rationalist alternatives ever since.

The doctrine also has significant political and educational consequences. If humans are equal in cognitive endowment at birth and acquire their characters through experience, then differences in capacity and behavior are products of education and circumstance rather than fixed natural differences. The egalitarian implications were taken up in different directions across the eighteenth century.

Primary and secondary qualities

Locke's distinction (Book II) between primary qualities (those that genuinely belong to objects in themselves: solidity, extension, figure, motion, number) and secondary qualities (those that exist only as the object's powers to produce ideas in us: color, sound, taste, smell). The distinction is not original to Locke (Galileo and Descartes had developed similar accounts) but Locke's formulation became canonical for the modern discussion.

The distinction has been continuously contested. Berkeley argued that the same arguments Locke gives for the subjectivity of secondary qualities equally undermine primary qualities. Contemporary discussions of color perception, sound, and other sensory modalities continue to engage Lockean categories.

Personal identity through memory

The Essay II.27 develops a famous account of personal identity. What makes me the same person over time is not sameness of substance (whether material or spiritual) but continuity of consciousness, especially memory. Where my memory extends, there my personal identity extends; what I cannot remember was not done by me in the relevant sense.

The doctrine has been one of the most influential single moves in modern philosophy of personal identity. Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons (1984) is the most influential contemporary development; the contemporary literature on personal identity (Eric Olson, Marya Schechtman, Galen Strawson) is substantially in dialogue with Locke.

Natural rights and the social contract

The Two Treatises of Government's positive doctrine (developed in the Second Treatise) is the foundational text of modern liberal political theory. In the state of nature, humans are free, equal, and possessed of natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Political society is formed when free individuals consent to government for the protection of these rights. The legitimate purpose of government is to protect natural rights; government that systematically violates them forfeits its authority and can be legitimately resisted.

The specific application: the Two Treatises defends the Glorious Revolution against the divine-right theory of monarchy. The broader application: the framework grounds the modern liberal-democratic tradition. The American founding (the Declaration of Independence's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is Locke modified), the French Revolution, and the contemporary international human rights tradition descend from this framework.

Religious toleration

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) is the philosophical foundation of the modern doctrine of religious toleration. Locke argues that civil government has no proper jurisdiction over religious belief (because religious belief cannot be compelled; the means of force are inappropriate to the end of genuine faith), and therefore the state should refrain from imposing religious uniformity. The argument has limits (Locke notoriously excludes Catholics and atheists from his toleration, on the grounds that their commitments threaten civil order); the framework has nonetheless been the foundation of subsequent arguments for broader toleration.

Key works

• Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689; four subsequent revised editions). The major philosophical work; four books on the origin and limits of human knowledge.
• Two Treatises of Government (1689). Foundational text of liberal political theory. The First Treatise refutes Filmer's patriarchalism; the Second Treatise develops the positive doctrine.
• A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689; followed by a Second Letter and Third Letter in response to objections). Foundational text on religious toleration.
• Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693). Pedagogical treatise developing the practical educational implications of the Essay.
• The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695). Treatment of Christian doctrine arguing for a moderate, rational version of the faith.
• Extensive correspondence and posthumous papers (the Locke archive at the Bodleian Library is substantial).

Influences and influenced

Influenced by: the Royal Society and the new natural philosophy of Boyle and Newton; the Cambridge Platonists; the Hooker-Grotius natural law tradition; the political experience of the English Civil War, Exclusion Crisis, and Glorious Revolution; the Dutch tolerationist tradition during his exile.

Influenced: virtually the entire modern empiricist and liberal tradition. Berkeley, Hume, and the British empiricist tradition developed in direct dialogue with the Essay. The American founding fathers (Jefferson, Madison, Adams) drew heavily on Locke's political theory; the Declaration of Independence's language is recognizably Lockean. The French Enlightenment (Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau) engaged Locke as a primary reference. Kant's Critical philosophy is in part a response to the empiricist project Locke initiated. Mill, the utilitarian tradition, and the broader liberal tradition through Rawls and contemporary political philosophy continue to operate substantially within Lockean frameworks.

Reception

Locke's contemporary reception was substantial and contested. The Essay was a major intellectual event of the 1690s; it went through four authorized editions in Locke's lifetime and was widely translated and engaged across Europe. Leibniz wrote a sustained critical response, New Essays on Human Understanding (composed by 1704, published posthumously 1765), engaging the Essay paragraph by paragraph.

The political works had a more delayed but ultimately more transformative reception. The Two Treatises were initially understood as defenses of the Glorious Revolution; their broader implications became clearer through the eighteenth-century debates about authority, rights, and consent. By the time of the American Revolution, Locke was the standard philosophical reference for the colonists' arguments against British authority.

The twentieth-century reception has been continuously vigorous. C.B. Macpherson's The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962) launched a sustained critique of Locke as the theorist of capitalist appropriation. The Cambridge School of intellectual history (Quentin Skinner, John Dunn) restored attention to Locke's specific historical context. The contemporary literature on Locke and slavery (especially since the work of David Armitage) has engaged the relation between his liberalism and his involvement in colonial commerce.

Continuing engagement

Major recent scholarly work includes John Dunn's The Political Thought of John Locke (1969) and Locke: A Very Short Introduction (2003), Peter Laslett's edition of the Two Treatises (Cambridge, 1960), Edwin Curley's edition of the Essay (Hackett), Roger Woolhouse's Locke (1983) and Locke: A Biography (2007), and Ruth Grant's John Locke's Liberalism (1987). The standard Clarendon edition of the Essay (Nidditch, 1975) and of the political and educational writings (Goldie, Yolton) are now standard. The Locke Studies journal documents ongoing scholarship. Active debates concern the relation between Locke's epistemology and his political philosophy, the place of religion in his work, the contemporary applicability of Lockean natural rights, and the question of Locke and slavery.

Further reading

• Empiricism — the tradition he founded
• Hume — the philosopher who took empiricism to its rigorous conclusion
• Kant — the philosopher whose Critical philosophy responds to the empiricist program
• Episteme — the inquiry into knowledge the Essay opens
• Belief Systems — the structure of belief his epistemology analyzes
• Justice — the political concept his Two Treatises grounds

The founder of modern empiricism and of liberal political philosophy.