John Locke
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"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." Locke in a letter to Molyneux |
Related e |
Featured: |
John Locke, (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher. Locke is considered the first of the British Empiricists, but is equally important to social contract theory. His ideas had enormous influence on the development of epistemology and political philosophy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and contributors to liberal theory. His writings influenced Voltaire and Rousseau, many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American revolutionaries. This influence is reflected in the American Declaration of Independence.
Locke's theory of mind is often cited as the origin for modern conceptions of identity and "the self", figuring prominently in the later works of philosophers such as David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Locke was the first philosopher to define the self through a continuity of "consciousness." He also postulated that the mind was a "blank slate" or "tabula rasa"; that is, contrary to Cartesian or Christian philosophy, Locke maintained that people are born without innate ideas.
List of major works
- (1690) A Second Letter Concerning Toleration
- (1692) A Third Letter for Toleration
- (1689) Two Treatises of Government
- (1690) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
- (1691) Some Considerations on the consequences of the Lowering of Interest and the Raising of the Value of Money
- (1693) Some Thoughts Concerning Education
- (1695) The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures
- (1695) A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity
Major posthumous manuscripts
- (1660) First Tract of Government (or the English Tract)
- (c.1662) Second Tract of Government (or the Latin Tract)
- (1664) Questions Concerning the Law of Nature (definitive Latin text, with facing accurate English trans. in Robert Horwitz et al., eds., John Locke, Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).
- (1667) Essay Concerning Toleration
- (1706) Of the Conduct of the Understanding
- (1707) A paraphrase and notes on the Epistles of St. Paul to the Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians
See also
- Libertarianism
- List of liberal theorists
- U.S. Constitution, influences