John Locke was an English empiricist who also laid some of the ideas that would later be used in the United States founding documents. Born in 1632, in Wrington, Locke was brought up with a simple lifestyle. Locke planned to study medicine and become a doctor at Oxford. However, during his education path he met Lord Shaftesbury, who would drastically alter his path for the rest of his life. Lord Shaftesbury was looking for a cure for a liver disease that he had contracted. Naturally, he perused the medical students, where he met Locke for the first time. Shaftesbury invited Locke to stay a part of his entourage and live in London. The switch to London was a pivotal moment in Locke’s life. At the time London was a hotbed for science, math, and, most import for Locke’s future, philosophy.
While in London Locke began to take part in debates over the hot topics of the day. One of the issues he debated was the role of government in religion. At a time of unrest with the government going through reforms, and with England’s history of bouncing between religious persecution depending on who was ruling, there was a glaring question about government control over religion. Locke was steadfast in his view of tolerance saying: “Earthly judges, the state in particular, and human beings in general cannot dependably evaluate the truth-claims of competing religious standpoints.” Locke was, in essence, saying that man has no way of, with total and complete certainty, knowing that their religion is the correct one. With this being the case people should be left to what they, as individuals, believe. He also argued that religion was a deeply personal choice, that no amount of force could make someone truly believe.
A second debate that Locke took on was that of ruling authorities’ origins. The most popular claim of which was the divine nature. In the past, rulers had the right to rule because it was the will of god(s). A second theory was that of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes argued that any government that kept the chaos of the time before government, the state of nature, was legitimate. Locke sought to take on both of these theories. Locke argued that the state of nature was no so much an endless void of chaos, as Hobbes had described, but a more peaceful state of nature. People had not given governments control out of fear. This was quite the contrast to Hobbes. Locke took it a step further saying that people had “natural right,” rights that they were born with. People would relinquish a small portion of these rights to a government if that government could protect the rest of the rights that they had. If the governing body became tyrannical, taking more rights than they were protecting, the citizens were entirely justified in overthrowing their government and installing a new one.
The third topic Locke took on was education. Locke believed we all are born as a “blank slate,” meaning that all of our ideas are molded by our experiences in life, not at birth by a higher being. He believed that education was critical to our morality and opinions, meaning that education and make someone good or evil. Locke believe that children are especially vulnerable to ideas that they come across, saying: “the little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences.” This is Locke saying that what we experience in our youth evolves us a great deal.
John Locke passed away in 1704 but his ideas relating to government, education, and religion lived on and shaped the world long after his death. The most glaring representation of this posthumous shaping came with the American Revolution and the subsequent French Revolution. Locke gave us great gifts in the for of his knowledge and perceptions. Whether we know it or not, they are in our lives every day.
A good video to sum it all up:
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During remote learning, I have accumulated 8 runs and, I'm not totally sure, had 28 runs before, including the midterm exam.
ReplyDeleteHere are the two posts that I commented on:
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2020/05/final-blog-madelyn-goins.html?showComment=1588700279310#c5104175526441841267
https://cophilosophy.blogspot.com/2020/05/an-epistemic-loneliness.html?showComment=1588700601231#c7777222296086871269
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DeleteHe was definitely one of our great "shapers"... for better and for worse, say some. If you're interested, check out Richard Rorty's "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature"... which indicts Locke for saddling western philosophy with a metaphor ("mirror") that's got us stuck in a pattern of thinking that closes us to other possibilities in philosophy and in life. But that's probably still a minority view, and if Locke hadn't existed we'd have to have invented him.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how you wrote about John Locke. I agree that we are all shaped by our experiences. If not than everyone would be virtually the same. Different experiences have different consequences and effects on people.
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