...Enlightenment Philosopher Research - John Locke John Locke was an English political philosopher who was one of the most influential Enlightenment thinkers and inspired the world with his ideas about the government and natural rights. He was also known as the “Father of Liberal Philosophy” because of his belief in Liberalism, which is a government whose authority is justified by its respect for human rights. Liberal government must treat individuals with respect, and pass laws that assure people freedom and liberty. He was not a follower for absolutism since he believed that all men are “equal and independent,” so no body should not ever “harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” Locke expanded the idea that the purpose of government is to protect the natural rights of the citizens. He believed that all men should be given three natural rights such as life, liberty and property, and that people naturally receive these rights simply by being born. Therefore, the role of government was to maintain these rights and if a government fails to preserve these rights, then the people have the right to change their government. Locke’s ideas were spread to the American thinkers when two of the English writers, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon popularized Locke’s political ideas in a famous series of articles published in London newspapers, and these had the most direct impact on American philosophers. Locke’s influence was most apparent in the Declaration of Independence...
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...#1 John Locke John Locke was more than just an ordinary man. He was the son of a country attorney and born on August 29, 1632. He grew up during the civil war and later entered the Church of Christ and remained there as a student and teacher for many years. With a wide variety of political and religious views, John expressed most of his personnel views on education, social, political and philosophies. Many of John’s views both political and religious were found to be famous though-out history in many countries. Locke was one of the first people who thought religion and state should be separated. Locke published anonymously the “Two Treaties of Government” and an essay “Concerning Human Understanding.” These writings were immediately successful and both influenced Rousseau and Voltaire along with many other scholars. John Locke’s Two Treatise of Government is a well-known and respected document. In the paper, John attacked the theory of the divine right of kings and maintained that all men are free and equal in the state of nature to posses certain rights. He did not believe that a king should become king because “God told him to,” but rather he was qualified for the position and the people felt he should be there. Locke argued that sovereignty did not reside in the state, but with the people and that, the state is supreme, but only if civil and “natural” law binds it. The task and duty of the government of any state was to protect mans rights. Locke believed...
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...Notes: John Locke, 1632-1704, Essay on Human Understanding • a British philosopher • Oxford academic and medical researcher • his association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become o a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, o An economic writer, opposition political activist, and o finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. • Much of his work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. • This opposition is both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. • Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and artifacts, as well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. • It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. • Locke also wrote a variety of important political, religious and educational works including the Two Treatises of Government, the Letters Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Essay on Human Understanding • Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists (ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes). • This reputation rests on An Essay Concerning...
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...John Locke's contributions in Philosophy and political views are followed and practiced even to this day. Locke’s ideas influenced religion, economics, political change, theories of knowledge and the human understanding that led to governmental and social improvements. John Locke believed in political reform. John Locke is one of the most influential authors and political philosophers in history. His ideas and views have influenced such momentous commodity such as the American constitution. Many of Locke’s ideas were used in the creation of the United States Constitution. John Locke was a British philosopher and medical researcher. Locke was born to Agnes Keene and John Locke on August 29, 1632, in Somerset, England. His father was a Puritan lawyer, who served as a Captain during the English civil war. Locke’s schooling began at Westminster School in 1647. He earned the title of King’s Scholar, which prepared him for the next phase of his education at the Christ Church in Oxford in 1652. He studied literature, physical science, medicine, politics, and natural philosophy. In 1656 he continued for his Master of Arts degree. In 1665 at Oxford, Locke encountered Lord Ashley, a notable statesman looking for medical treatment. After a friendship formed, Ashley invited Locke to join him in London as his personal physician. Locke agreed and left for London in 1667, where he lived for the next eight years. This was the beginning of Locke’s deep political interests, which was...
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...John Locke - Biography John Locke (1632-1704) John Locke was born on August 29, 1632, in Warington, a village in Somerset, England. In 1646 he went to Westminster school, and in 1652 to Christ Church in Oxford. In 1659 he was elected to a senior studentship, and tutored at the college for a number of years. Still, contrary to the curriculum, he complained that he would rather be studying Descartes than Aristotle. In 1666 he declined an offer of preferment, although he thought at one time of taking up clerical work. In 1668 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1674 he finally graduated as a bachelor of medicine. In 1675 he was appointed to a medical studentship at the college. He owned a home in Oxford until 1684, until his studentship was taken from him by royal mandate. Locke's mentor was Robert Boyle, the leader of the Oxford scientific group. Boyle's mechanical philosophy saw the world as reducible to matter in motion. Locke learned about atomism and took the terms "primary and secondary qualities" from Boyle. Both Boyle and Locke, along with Newton, were members of the English Royal Society. Locke became friends with Newton in 1688 after he had studied Newton's Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. It was Locke's work with the Oxford scientists that gave him a critical perspective when reading Descartes. Locke admired Descartes as an alternative to the Aristotelianism dominant at Oxford. Descartes' "way of ideas" was a major influence on Locke's...
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...sensory experience or any religious teachings as the source of knowledge or justification. Thus, it holds that some propositions are knowable by us by intuition alone, while others are knowable by being deduced through valid arguments from intuited propositions. It relies on the idea that reality has a rational structure in that all aspects of it can be grasped through mathematical and logical principles, and not simply through sensory experience. The most famous rationalists were Descartes and Spinoza. Empiricism is a philosophical perspective to counter the rationalism of the 17th century. Empiricists were philosophers who felt that everything in our mind comes from our experience through the senses. They heavily critiqued the rationalists. Locke, Berkeley and Hume were the most famous empiricists. Throughout this age, the Philosophers evolved all thinking of different ways of understanding our purpose in life and how we work along with various other explanations involving the world around them. Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer of the Age of Reason. He had a desire to achieve insight into the nature of man and the universe. He has been called the "Father of Modern Philosophy" and he was one of the most influential philosophers in modern philosophy and many believe he was very ahead of his time. Many think he was similar to Socrates because he was convinced that certain knowledge is gained through reason. He second guessed...
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...JOHN LOCKE Summary The First Treatise is a criticism of Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, which argues in support of the divine right of kings. According to Locke, Filmer cannot be correct because his theory holds that every man is born a slave to the natural born kings. Locke refuses to accept such a theory because of his belief in reason and in the ability of every man to virtuously govern himself according to God’s law. The Second Treatise is Locke’s proposed solution to the political upheaval in England and in other modern countries. This text laid the foundation for modern forms of democracy and for the Constitution of the United States. The Second Treatise consists of a short preface and nineteen chapters. In chapter i, Locke defines political power as the right to make laws for the protection and regulation of property. In his view, these laws only work because the people accept them and because they are for the public good. In chapter ii, Locke claims that all men are originally in a state of nature. A man in this original state is bound by the laws of nature, but he is otherwise able to live, act, and dispose of his possessions as he sees fit. More important, human beings, free from the arbitrary laws of other men, have an obligation to protect the interests of each other, since they are all equally children of God. They also have an obligation to punish those who go against God’s will and attempt to harm another by compromising his life, liberty, or possessions. In chapters...
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...Haitian revolutions. John was a philosopher. (someone who thinks a lot about how people think). John Locke has influenced many other leaders too such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. John got his power by being a philosopher. He got a very good education because of his dad having connections to the government. And that is what got him where he was at the time. The way that he used his power was maybe the most central idea in Locke's political way of thinking...
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...The Key to Locke Born in 1632, John Locke is known as one of the most famous philosophers from the 17th century. Not only known as an esteemed philosopher, Locke was also a physician and political theorists. Locke believed in “The Enlightenment,” which is the theory that reason is more important than faith and science is more important than religion. Perhaps one of Locke’s most famous works was An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In this essay, Locke began to analyze the human mind and how we acquire knowledge. Within this essay, Locke established the “Tabula Rasa” theory or “blank slate” theory, which is that every human is a “white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.” (Locke 1). Published in 1690, “this paper considers...
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...power right, Locke explains how we must understand the state of all men; a state also of equality. In Book 2—Chapter 2 Of the State of Nature, Locke begins to explain that all men live in a state of perfect power, equality and freedom. Men are all born naturally equal in the same state, where no one has power or privilege over another. Their actions and behaviors cannot be bound by other men. Locke states that the only time a man should obey authority and obedience, is in the presence of God; God is allowed to bequeath some dominance in power of man. He then goes to quote Richard Hooker— an influential Anglican Theologian—who writes that men crave things that satisfy them, such as affection. If they crave these things...
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...many of which strived to achieve the title of the Isaac Newton of the social sciences. John Locke, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and Mary Wollstonecraft all believed that there...
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...Vice or Virtue John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are two highly influential philosophers who individually wrote pieces on what they believe would be the correct form of governing, both advocated the only way to govern people is to do so with their willing consent. Despite their agreement on that, their foundations to reach this ultimate goal is starkly different, they view the people who are giving this consent with different lens. Locke considered the assurance of one’s private property a positive and prosperous for man, and motivated the ability to attain more than what is needed as long as it is not taken by force or gone to waste. Rousseau blatantly viewed it as an evil phenomenon that would begin the domino effect for the decline in...
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...About John Locke, he is a philosopher from the 1600s and had ideas about how humans are in their natural habitat. His theory was that people were born as a ball of clay and the job to mold that clay into something good was the job of the environment the baby is born in. The ball of clay would be molded by people or things in the environment. So if someone was in a bad environment like their parents or a very close friend are doing drugs or are in a gang, his theory would say that he would get involved with that. If the baby was in a good and nurturing environment the baby would be very good. To prove John Locke’s theory is true I came up with an example, my friend Anna was born a swimmer because her parents raised her in an environment around...
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...He is known as the father of liberal philosophy. John Locke, one of the most well known philosophers and thinkers from the Renaissance and Enlightenment. He attended some of the most prestigious schools to achieve his level of study in philosophy. He has made many contributions to the world. Including, but not limited to, contributions to governmental and political ideas. John Locke was born on August 29th 1632. He went to Westminster school when he was about 15 years old. Locke got a privileged education because of his father’s relations with the English government and after attending Westminster school he got a district honor which allowed him to attend the Christ Church at University of Oxford where he studied logic, metaphysics, and classical...
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...| John Locke | The father of modern liberalism | | Cole Davis | 5/20/2012 | | Liberalism, a political ideology based on the belief that constant progress is achievable, the human race is composed of intrinsically good beings, and that these intrinsically good beings are and should be autonomous in nature, is an idea that made an incredible resurgence during the English enlightenment. As the belief of Liberalism gained popularity with the public it also developed an enormous following among European philosophers. John Locke, the individual responsible for the idea of natural rights as well as the social compact, helped mold this idea of Liberalism into its own unique philosophical tradition. Because of these great contributions, John Locke is considered as father of modern liberalism. Born August 29, 1632 at Wrington in Somerset, John Locke was the son of a lawyer and the oldest child of his Puritan household (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). While Locke was a child, his father closely monitored and guided his education. An incredibly educated individual, Locke first received a formal education at Westminster School eventually graduating to Christ Church, Oxford (Collinson). After receiving his bachelors of arts in 1656, Locke stayed at Oxford to earn his master’s degree. Locke became the censor of moral philosophy in 1664 and in 1675 when the Earl of Shaftesbury fell from power; Locke exiled himself to France to restore his health (Locke, Berkeley, Hume). After four...
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